


Face the Music Together

by bluesyturtle



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Background Relationships, Billy Hargrove Redemption, Canon-Typical Behavior, Domestic Violence, Everybody Lives, Family, Fix-It, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Injury, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, MOST OF THIS FIC IS T-RATED, POV Alternating, Physical Abuse, Slice of Life, Suicide Attempt, Trauma, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:35:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 26
Words: 198,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23673976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesyturtle/pseuds/bluesyturtle
Summary: Billy is used to things in his life going a certain way. To boil it down to its simplest parts, he finds people to love, and then he loses them. However long it lasts and however ugly it ends and however much it hurts, he always finds himself going back for more.As far as Steve’s concerned, things really only end if you let them. He can’t talk loss so much, but loving people’s another story. He’s down to teach Billy some of what he knows — if he’ll stay put long enough to learn.A story about healing old wounds and falling in love and making friends and changing for the better. The AU where nobody dies except the monsters.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 135
Kudos: 184





	1. Plenty of Chances to Decide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beguile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beguile/gifts).



> While I’ve endeavored to give you the most polished version of this story that I could, you may yet find anachronisms or other such errors in this work. All mistakes or misconceptions are my own. Hopefully they won’t be too jarring. Enjoy, my loves! For future reference, I will always leave chapter warnings in the beginning notes.
> 
> This is for my lobster, Beguile. Chandler & Miller 5-ever. Khaleesi Begeesy! <4
> 
> P. S. I don’t own Stranger Things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) Neil Hargrove, suicidal ideation/attempted suicide, underage, and the dEviL’s LeTtUcE  
> 2) For those concerned about the underage tag: Billy is 16 here and the person he's with is 19  
> 3) We’re in Hawkins after this, so fear not! This fic will not take place exclusively in California with a bunch of OCs. <3  
> 

> _Traumatic events, by definition, overwhelm our ability to cope. When the mind becomes flooded with emotion, a circuit breaker is thrown that allows us to survive the experience fairly intact, that is, without becoming psychotic or frying out one of the brain centers. The cost of this blown circuit is emotion frozen within the body. In other words, we often unconsciously stop feeling our trauma partway into it, like a movie that is still going after the sound has been turned off. We cannot heal until we move fully through that trauma, including all the feelings of the event._
> 
> _PTSD is a whole-body tragedy, an integral human event of enormous proportions with massive repercussions._
> 
> — Susan Pease Banitt

Part One: A Whole-Body Tragedy

The screen door slams open under his fist and nearly flies off its hinges, and Billy drives to the beach without seeing the streets that take him there. He doesn’t see the beach either, when he gets there. Noise fills up his head. He can’t see the sky, can’t feel which way is up, can’t breathe. The screaming ache in his ribs makes him wanna puke and the door bursting open under his hand is all that feels real, his dad coming after him, the look in his eyes, cold and empty like a weapon ready to be fired.

Water laps up around his knees, and Billy wades out into it toward the sun painting the sky red. The plain white t-shirt he’s wearing billows up around his armpits like a parachute tangled up in wasted fuselage. Cold floods in and puts out the fire raging in his side. It rushes up around his neck, over his head, swallowing up his hair, and down he goes into a world of green, silent and cold but warming the longer he stays. His tingling fists unravel into hands, no more the battering ram they’d been. He doesn’t remember how he got here, what he said or what he was doing or why it would’ve been his fault. It must’ve been, though. It’s always his fault. What had he said?

He doesn’t remember, but it doesn’t exist down here anyway. What he said and the way his dad looked at him, it doesn’t matter. He can’t breathe.

Billy had burst through the front door with pain gnawing at his ribs and stinging in his face. His heart had felt like it would explode in his chest, but why? It wasn’t new. It wasn’t unexpected. It wasn’t scary anymore, except for in the one way it would probably never stop being scary, but it had felt — not new or familiar but both of those things, enhanced a thousandfold.

It had felt like the first time his dad ever hit him. It reminded him of being small and so full of fury that he couldn’t be afraid. He hadn’t known how to be afraid of his dad, not in the way he learned to be. He had done it for his mom, to come to her rescue, to be her shield, to protect her. How she’d screamed. For Dad to stop, that he was hurting Billy, but he wasn’t. It didn’t hurt until after, when he could feel again and his whole body hadn’t gone numb and limp under his dad’s backhand. He’d been so small, and his mom had been so beautiful, even wailing, even with a black eye and a busted lip. He loved her like he’s never loved anyone or anything, and he thought she loved him. She said she did. She said she always would. He can’t breathe.

Sunlight dances through his fingers like strands of her hair. He misses her. He wonders if he’ll see her when this is over. When it all stops. When some asshole making minimum wage has to scrape his bloated corpse off the beach before any kids see it.

He’d done it for her, stepped in front of his dad with arms stretched wide. For her. So it would stop, but it never stopped. It never has. She’s gone, and he’s here sinking to the bottom of the ocean remembering the blue of her eyes, her smile caught in the sun, the way she would call him back from the water. She doesn’t call for him now. Hasn’t been there to say his name for more than half his life already. He wishes he could hear her say it again. Just one more time to help him sleep. To stop the stinging and quaking in his skin. To make it stop hurting. To make it stop. His lungs are on fire. He screams, thrashing, willing it to end, wanting it to end. Wanting that dream of her to be the last thing he knows because it’s all he has. It’s the only happiness he’s ever had.

His head goes light and distant, muddied. The green strangles itself black, and he sinks like a stone, like a splintered battering ram. All water, no static, no friction. The pressure eases. He can’t breathe.

It’s better than falling asleep.

But Billy should know by now that he can’t have what he wants and expect to keep it. The vision of his mom, an echo of her voice in his ears, explodes into orange daylight and seagulls calling and someone wrapped around him. Water escapes him in gouts, and he breathes, oxygen tearing in him like broken glass. He can’t stop breathing it.

“Kid! Hey! Can you hear me? You’re okay! You’re okay. Breathe.”

Sand flies beneath his hands, sinks in under his nails and embeds itself between his fingers and in the lines of his knuckles. His skin’s on fire. The world is so much louder than he remembers.

“Don’t touch me!” he chokes out, trying to get away from the hand on his back.

“Okay, I’m sorry. Are you… are you hurt?”

“What?”

She’s not looking at his face when he raises his head. Her gaze is lower, honed in on the bruises darkening his ribs. He scrambles to pull his shirt down, heart pounding in his ears. She doesn’t try to touch him again, but she doesn’t leave him either.

“My name’s Nora. You got a name?”

He doesn’t answer. Keeping the air in his lungs feels more important, no matter how badly he tried to keep it out before. Nora doesn’t let on that she’s offended.

“Are you cold?”

He gives a juddering nod. If his teeth weren’t chattering, he’d tell her through a barbed grin that he usually runs hot. That’s if he didn’t feel completely hollowed out — and cold. Doesn’t make sense how cold he is, when the water had been so warm.

“We’ve got towels and probably some dry clothes at the lifeguard station if you want to walk back that way with me. You won’t be warming up anytime soon if you don’t change.”

He doesn’t move, and neither does Nora. She’s still just watching him. Billy watches her back. She’s older than him, and she looks it. Even for the pigtails her black hair’s braided into and even for the way she’s sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, she looks steady, patient. Like a teacher who’s just broken up a fight between children on the playground, except Billy’s the only one she dragged out of the water.

“Looks like you took a hell of a beating,” she says, and doesn’t comment on the blank, uncomprehending way he’s been staring at her.

He swallows and looks away, shakily pawing at the sand until he can push off his hands to sit back on his knees. His shoulders droop. He chooses to blame it on his sopping wet clothes, dripping and chilling him right down to his bones. Breathing still hurts.

“How’s your nose?” she continues, conversational, like she’s determined to keep his attention but doesn’t want to scare him off.

“Burns,” he mutters, not looking up from the splay of his fingers over his shorts. He really looks at himself then, at the clothes he was wearing when he fled the house. The stupid shorts that are a little too short and the white t-shirt that’s gonna start fucking with his tan if he stays out in the sun much longer. He’s wearing tube socks and no shoes. He doesn’t know why he’s embarrassed the most at that, but it’s revealing in a way he thought he might have a chance at keeping quiet.

“It burns because you inhaled water, or it burns because somebody hit you in the face?”

Billy grits his teeth. He wishes he hadn’t said anything, but she keeps watching him, the sharp symmetry of her features looking impossibly soft, and he can’t fathom why he cares — _he doesn’t care_ — but it feels safe, coaxing in a way he recognizes but doesn’t hate somehow. He holds his hands up, contemplating them for a long second, and dusts them off, mumbling, “Yeah.”

Since she mentioned it, he prods gently at his nose to try and feel for a break. It sparks behind his eyes how much it hurts, but it doesn’t feel broken. At least there’s that.

“Was it the same person who gave you those bruises?”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure you don’t. Okay, then do you wanna tell me what you’re doing out here?”

“Thought I’d go for a swim,” he mutters glibly.

“Really? In your pajamas?”

He doesn’t know what he’s still doing here in his sopping wet clothes, fielding questions when he could just leave. Except he has a feeling what she’ll do if he tries it, and she proves him right.

“Sit your ass down.”

He surprises himself — and doesn’t surprise her in the slightest — by complying. The look she gives him is all edges.

“Problem?”

It’s pretty obvious to Billy what she’s asking, and no matter how shitty he feels, he’s not his dad. He doesn’t give a fuck about skin color, and the only person he’s ever loved was a woman, so he’s not gonna be a bitch about that either.

“No, ma’am.”

That softens her a bit, but even that he doesn’t understand. Lifeguard or no, babysitting tight-lipped nutcases who try to drown on purpose isn’t in her job description. He oughta thank her for what she did, for going in to get him when he thought for sure no one would. For sitting with him and for talking to him like a human being. If he could find the words to thank her, though — and he can’t. _He can’t_ — he might end up telling her the rest of it. That everything hurts, that it always has, that he just wanted his mom…

It’s not her fuckin’ job to care. He doesn’t know why she won’t just let it go.

“Do you have parents I can call?” she asks, offhanded again like she doesn’t expect a response.

But the question makes him flinch, and fear combined with how goddamn cold he is in his dripping wet clothes makes him shiver. “ _No!_ No, I don’t.”

“Okay, it’s not a big deal. How about we see if we can find you some clothes?”

They’re far enough from the lifeguard tower that it’s a little bit of a hike getting to it. Billy’s almost grateful for the distraction. He peels off his socks and grinds his heels in the hot sand, balance teetering with every step. Nora doesn’t try to keep him talking. She just gets him to the tower, digs up a volunteer lifeguard uniform and a towel, and starts walking again, carrying the stuff he thought she’d be sending him away with.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking you to the changing rooms,” she says without looking back to see if he’s following her.

Billy scowls at the sky and follows her. When they get there, she unloads all the stuff onto him, brisk and clinical, like she’s gotta get back to work. And yeah, she must have to. _Thank you_ keeps sticking in his throat, but he has to say something.

“Billy. My name’s Billy.”

She looks at him. Really looks at him. He holds his ground and doesn’t look away.

“I need to get back, but I’m gonna bring someone to come talk to you, okay, Billy? Will you let me do that?”

“I won’t talk to cops,” he says, dropping his eyes and biting his cheek.

“No cops,” she agrees, watching him.

He wants to say no. Wants to get changed and take off and forget all this shit happened, but her eyes. “Fine,” he hears himself saying. “Whatever.”

She jogs back the way they came, and Billy drags his feet into a changing room. He sets the folded up clothes on a bench in the stall, a pair of faded flip flops dropping out from beneath the pile. He nudges them aside with his foot and shucks all his wet things. The towel is warm from the sun when he drapes it around his shoulders and burrows his face into it. For the first time since he left the house, he does what he couldn’t do when he was underwater or when Nora could see. He cries.

He’s so stupid. He doesn’t know why he did it. Knows why he _wanted to_ , sure, but to actually do it? What the fuck was he thinking? What does he think’s gonna happen to Max if he’s not there to be the punching bag anymore? He knows what happened to him when Mom left, and as much as Dad acts like Max can do no wrong, Billy knows nothing’s ever really gonna be good enough for him. He scrubs the towel through his hair and over his face. The clothes Nora got for him are mostly his size, but the tank’s long on him and the shorts are too big. He pulls the drawstrings so they’ll stay up, steps into the flip flops, and wrings out his soaked clothes over a drain built into the floor.

By the time he walks back outside with his stuff flipped over his arm so it can drip dry, he’s forgotten about the compromise Nora left him with. She didn’t, though. Clearly.

“Young man?” says a barrel-chested older guy wearing moccasins and pale yellow swim trunks. His shoulders and the spot just below his neck are turning a bright red even in spite of the sunscreen wafting off him in a cloud.

Billy stops, one hand seeking out the towel slung over his shoulder. He tries to grin, but he hasn’t quite walked off the fistfight with the ocean yet. “Yes, sir?”

“You’re Billy, aren’t you? My daughter Nora asked me to come talk to you. I’m Sven.”

“Oh. Look, um.” Billy shakes his hand. “It was just a misunderstanding. The whole…”

“So you didn’t try to take your life just now?” Sven asks, probing and patient. He’s still gripping Billy’s hand. “Nora indicated to me that you were in some distress when she found you.”

Billy feels himself bristling, wanting to escape this conversation and the slow spin of dread it sends spiraling through his gut. He felt like he owed it to Nora not to be a dick because she saved his life, and he doesn’t much want to talk shit to her dad either, but his heart’s slamming in his chest and anger’s the easiest fucking thing to express always. He takes his hand back, adrenaline warring with logic — the familiar panic butting heads with some kinda yearning he’s used to ignoring.

“Do you think you could spare a few minutes to come sit with me? I know it would mean a lot to Nora.”

Too aware of how recently he cried his eyes out, Billy asks him, “Why?”

“Why don’t you come watch the sunset with me, and I’ll tell you, huh, Billy?”

Billy goes with him back toward the water, separated from it by a line of beached kelp. He shakes the towel out onto the sand, and Sven helps him get it sitting evenly on the sand. Billy wants to be annoyed, but he’s got nowhere else to be and nowhere else he’s been actively _asked_ to be except right here with this odd, soft spoken stranger, and how sad is that?

He lays his clothes out over a corner of the towel to catch the last of the warmth from the sun. Maybe the lingering heat in the air will dry them out. Thinking about that keeps his mind off the sucking pain in his chest.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Sven says, gesturing at the sky. “I was about your age when I saw my first American sunset. Summer of 1924. Hell of a thing.”

“Sixty years of stars and stripes,” Billy murmurs absently.

Sven smiles, looking out at that bright pink sunset and remembering the first time. What did he look like? Probably skinny and pale with eyes too big for his face. America in the ‘20s, Jesus. Wasn’t everybody starving back then?

“We came over from Sweden on a boat with a hundred other families, it felt like. I don’t mind telling you, I puked all the way from Malmö to New York.”

Billy snorts. He doesn’t mean to. He’s still trying to make like he hates this, like it’s not necessary, like he hasn’t been craving something like it for — years, probably. His whole life. “Long way from home.”

“Eh, well, home is where you put down roots. For my parents that meant New York. For me it meant following a girl. You know Eartha Kitt?”

“Catwoman? You tellin’ me you dated Catwoman?” Billy says, starting to smile at the ridiculousness of it and how wanting to laugh fills something in him.

“Of course not, no. Nora’s mother, Maggie, she looked just like Eartha Kitt. But let me tell you something, my Maggie was prettier. She still is. I came here after the war to ask her to marry me, and she said yes. We’ve been here ever since.”

Billy does the math in his head. What is that, forty years with the same person? He can’t imagine wanting to talk to the same person for forty years. He can’t much imagine anyone putting up with him that long either. Marriage is supposed to be a forever kinda deal, but he didn’t think people ever actually made it. That’s not how he’s seen it play out in his experience.

“Have you given any thought about where you’d like your home to be?”

Spots dance in Billy’s eyes from staring at the sun. He hasn’t thought about it at all. He has to get out, he knows that, but at the same time, the thought of leaving Max alone with his dad is…

“It’s all right if you haven’t. You’re young still. You’ll have plenty of chances to decide.”

It doesn’t feel like he will, but thinking that hurts. He doesn’t want to say that out loud, so he doesn’t say anything. For a while Billy just watches the waves lap at the shore. The sky turns orange with the faintest streaks of washed out green. Billy’s stomach growls. He hasn’t had anything to eat all day.

“Hungry?”

Billy pats down his clothes. His socks are still damp, but everything else is more or less dry. He starts bundling them up in his arms.

“How about a bite to eat? It’ll be my treat.”

“You don’t gotta do this,” Billy mumbles, checking through his meager belongings for his keys and not finding them.

“I know I don’t. Thing is, I could eat, and I’d like to sit with you a little while longer if that’s all right with you. There’s a place on the pier me and Nora frequent on her days off. I don’t know if you like seafood.”

Billy’s stomach rumbles even louder. He claps a hand over it, embarrassed.

Sven gets to his feet and holds out a hand for Billy to take. “Humor an old man.”

The place Sven takes them to is a little open-air restaurant looking out over the water. He orders fish and chips and shrimp tacos and a water with lemon. Billy gets a soda. Their server brings a basket of fries to the table, and Billy stares at them.

“Go on. I got ‘em to share.”

Billy eats and downs his soda and the water Sven pushes over to him, and he scarfs down the plate of tacos when they come to the table, too. After he’s stuffed and warming his toes in the sun dried bundle pooling out from under his chair, their server brings over another coke, another basket of fries, and a dessert menu.

“Feel better?” At Billy’s nod, he murmurs, “Good, good.”

In the muted light from the restaurant, the wrinkles in his face are easier to make out. Crows feet around his eyes from laughing, one line by his eyebrow from frowning, and hardly any lines at all across his forehead. His hair’s white and ash blond, receding, but he’s still got a lot of it left. Sixty years ago he was Billy’s age. Hell, sixty years. Billy’s never really let himself consider it. He chews on the straw sticking out of his drink, wondering at the idea of being alive that long when the food and the company and the cool air on his skin feel stolen.

“Why do this, huh, Sven?”

“You looked like you could use the help.”

Eyes stinging, Billy says, “She coulda just left me there. Wouldn’t’ve made a difference.”

“I disagree, and I think at your heart, you don’t really believe it either.”

Billy tries to smile and feels it like a storm in his throat. The heat behind his eyes builds. He presses his fingers to them and can’t speak.

“I don’t know what you’re feeling or where you are in your life. Only you can say what those things are, but I’ve found myself sitting in that chair you’re in right now.”

“You mean you tried to drown yourself in the ocean?” Billy whispers, not moving his hands from his face.

In that easygoing tone he passed along to Nora, he says, “No, I took my father’s revolver out of the safe he kept it in and I held it just here.”

Billy opens his eyes to see him holding two fingers to his temple. “You what?”

Sven folds his hands on the table, nodding somberly. “I pulled the trigger, and you know what? The gun didn’t fire. My father had taken the bullets. When it didn’t go off, I felt relieved in a way I never have outside of that moment. Not before and not since. Bit of a conundrum, isn’t it? To want something, to want it to the point of desperation, and realize afterward that it wasn’t what you wanted at all.”

Their server comes back to the table before Billy’s figured out how to form words, and Sven orders two vanilla milkshakes.

“Why do it then?” Billy asks when the server walks away. Part of him doesn’t even have to ask. Part of him — a big part — knows.

“At the time I thought it would solve the way I felt.”

“You didn’t think so, after?” Billy asks, strangled, staring at his hands balled up in his lap.

“No, and it wouldn’t have.”

Billy wipes furiously at his face, trying not to hear how anguished he sounds. “How do you know?”

“Because dying doesn’t stop the story. It just takes your voice out of it. You gotta understand, Billy. There’s so much more that’s gonna happen in your life than whatever drew you out here today. The good’s out there if you know where to look for it, and so’s the place that’ll be your home someday. You just have to find it. This darkness that’s attached itself to you won’t last forever.”

The numb, twisted up tangle of Billy’s hands relaxes. His heartbeat, still fast, starts to slow down. He hears himself ask, “What about family?”

“You make that, too,” he says, like it’s obvious, like it’s easy, like Jim Crow didn’t kick his ass when Billy knows, logically, that it must have. As if he hears what Billy’s thinking, he adds, “Oh, it’ll be you against the world sometimes, but when you love someone — whoever it is and whatever way that you love them — you’d defy God Himself to be with them. Never mind men and their institutions. It’s hard work, but it’s worth it, and no matter what anyone says, loving another person, really loving them and caring for them and building a life with them, it’s never an abomination. Not ever.”

Billy thinks about his dad and whatever the hell must pass for love in his eyes. Up against Sven’s forty years knowing the same woman and raising one hell of a kid with her, Dad’s preference for hatred and bruises feels more like the abomination. It sure as shit ain’t love, but Billy’s known that for a while now.

Their server brings two milkshakes and the check. Sven tucks a folded bill under the ketchup bottle and promptly dips a french fry in his shake.

“Gross,” Billy says, because he can’t say, _No one’s ever gonna love me like that._

“Try it.”

Billy makes a face at the combination of salty and sweet. It’s weird. He likes it. They finish their milkshakes in easy silence, and Billy feels, for the first time in a good long while, at peace.

“It’s getting late. Is there somewhere you can go?”

“Yes, sir,” he says, before really thinking it through. He can’t go home and he can’t just show up at Sam’s while he has Max for the weekend, but there is one person he knows that might just take him in.

“Good. Billy,” he says, soft, when Billy starts to stand. “Is there a reason you can’t go home?”

“’S not a good time. That’s all.”

“Are you sure?”

Billy crouches to start getting his things together. “Yeah. Thank you. For the food, I mean. And the milkshake. Tell Nora — ”

“Tell Nora…?” she says, appearing behind him in sweats and a shirt identical to the one he’s wearing. Her hair’s down, big wavy curls framing either side of her face.

He panics, blurts out, “You do kinda look like Eartha Kitt,” and feels his face turn red.

She gives her dad a knowing look. Her face is different when she smiles, sweeter, not at all like the stark professional she’d been on the beach. “Sounds like you two hit it off.”

“Yes, we did. Billy was just making his escape, but maybe he’ll allow us to see him off.”

“I don’t mind,” Billy mumbles, mortified at himself still and patting down his clothes one more time to look for his keys. Maybe he left them in the car?

Sven and Nora walk the moonlit boardwalk with their arms around each other, and Billy tries not to be so aware of the emptiness in his chest. He’d felt that weight lift for a while and that had been its own kind of torture, but now it sits even heavier behind his sternum, the fact that these people he just met know him better than any of his so-called friends at school. Or anyone else in his life, for that matter. Loneliness crawls up his throat like a scream, and he smothers it. Gene had better be home tonight, that’s all he lets himself think about.

“How’s your nose?” Nora asks, casual but perceptive in the same way her dad is.

He shrugs and mutters something about it being fine. It doesn’t hurt much now unless he thinks about it or twitches his face the wrong way.

“What about the other thing?”

Billy doesn’t wanna tell her it hurts. He doesn’t want to lie her, but he doesn’t want to concede weakness now when he’s surrendered so much today already. “Gonna ice it. That’ll help, right?”

She nods, and Sven doesn’t ask what they’re talking about. She must’ve already told him, or she will as soon as he leaves. If he can leave. They get to his car — thankfully it’s right where he left it — and he tentatively tries the handle. It’s unlocked, and the key’s just there on the seat. He sighs, relieved, and tosses his shit onto floor of the passenger’s side.

“It was very nice to meet you, Billy. Be safe tonight, okay?”

He spins back around, feeling — bereft. He has to go. He _wants_ to get the hell out of here and away from these people who make him want to let his guard down and tell the truth, but —

“We’re here most Sundays,” Sven adds, like it’s something he was going to say anyway and not like he could see and decipher the conflict in Billy’s face. “Or you can give me a call. We’re in the phonebook, me and Maggie. Under Bjerhammar,” he says, sounding, for the first time to Billy’s ears that don’t know any better, distinctly European.

Seeing his blank face, Nora spells it out for him. “B-J-E-R-H-A-M-M-A-R.”

“Oh, _Bjerhammar_ ,” Billy says, nodding. “I thought you said beer hammer.”

“Does have a certain ring to it,” Sven muses idly.

“Better than Hargrove,” he mutters, stalling with his hand on the door. The words he’s been choking down drift to the surface. “Listen, uh. I’m — thank you. For…”

Nora smiles kindly. “The clothes.”

“The food,” Sven adds, easily, like it wasn’t a huge pain in the ass pulling him back from the edge of a stupid, pointless death and taking care of him all afternoon.

“Yeah,” Billy whispers, looking away.

“Take care of yourself, kid,” Nora says.

He nods, looks at them one more time, and gets in his car. They wave and watch him drive off, and Billy very carefully doesn’t think about them again on the drive over to Gene’s apartment. He doesn’t think about drowning or the ache in his ribs, and he doesn’t think about Mom.

When he parks the car outside Gene’s, he takes the key with him. Wasn’t much of a drive. His place is only a spare three blocks from the water. The first time Billy saw it he thought it was the most badass thing ever, but now it just makes him feel claustrophobic. Even worse than that is the fact that it always smells like the next door neighbor’s curry but never has any real fucking food in it. Billy raps a knuckle on the door and goes to press his elbow against the doorjamb, but the motion just makes his side seize up. Of course that’s when Gene opens the door.

His hands come up around Billy’s arms. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. You okay?”

“Get off me,” Billy grunts, shoving him and stumbling back into the door when he’s promptly let go. He only sort of catches himself on the doorjamb, but even then it makes something in his side _stab_ like a motherfucker.

“What the fuck, dude? Your face — ”

Billy lifts his chin, waiting for him to say something about his nose or the dull ache in his cheek, but Gene’s not looking anywhere but at his eyes.

“Have you been crying?”

“What? No! Fuck you,” Billy spits.

Gene’s expression opens up in shock. Slowly, he says, “Okay. Well, do you wanna come in?”

Even falling over in the fucking doorway, Billy has to be a contrary son of a bitch about it. He laughs through gritted teeth. “Not gonna be puttin’ you out, am I?”

“You’re insane, man,” Gene mutters, but he’s warming up again, big brown eyes going soft. “No, you’re not putting me out. Will you just come in already?”

Billy goes to peel himself off the door and flails out with one hand when he starts to fall in earnest. Gene reaches for him, stumbling, trying to catch him but not knowing where Billy’s hurt. He ends up just plastering himself to Billy’s other side, the one he hasn’t been cradling since he showed up.

“Gimme your arm, man, or you’re gonna take me down with you.”

They’re working with a height difference, but they’ve had enough practice by now that Gene knows the correct amount of slouching that’ll put him comfortably in Billy’s reach. He shuffles them inside and swings the door shut behind them, walking Billy into the apartment and pouring him out over the lumpy couch. The TV across from it is playing some movie about a cabin in the woods. Gene stuffs a pillow under his head and promptly walks off into the kitchen. Billy yanks it out from under his head and slowly, painfully starts to sit up.

“Did you make this?” he calls out, inspecting the hand-stitched sunflowers sewn into soft blue fabric.

“My grandma did. Nice, right? Her rope skipping days are over, but tiny little patterns in thread? You’d think it was something if you ever saw her at it. Nimble as hell, my grandma. No arthritis for her.”

Billy tosses the pillow back onto the lawn chair, not wanting to dirty up some little old lady’s pride and joy. Gene comes back out with a baggie of ice and a plain white mug. He stops in front of Billy and holds out first the ice then the mug.

“It’s just water, but I got other shit if you want.”

“Water’s fine,” Billy mumbles and downs it all, holding the ice to his ribs. He hands the mug back and looks all the way up at Gene when he takes it.

He’s a tall guy, enough that he makes Billy feel short constantly. Gene sets the mug on the coffee table — a bunch of pallets they sanded down and hammered in with nails. Billy remembers getting a splinter and bitching about it all day, but it came out looking pretty cool in spite of that. His attention snaps back to Gene when his knees hit the carpet. Billy lets his hands drop, thinking he knows what to expect when warm hands come up to the hem of his shirt.

“Did you get a job down at the beach or what?” Gene spreads his hand over the logo on Billy’s chest. He’s warm, and his hands are so big, and goddamn him, he knows Billy likes his hands. “It’s not really your style, dude. No offense.”

“Fuck you,” Billy mutters, but he lets him slip his hand underneath.

For one stretched breath, Billy feels better, hot, like liquid, but then Gene’s fingertips skate over to the right, and pain — light but sharp and insistent — cuts through the heat. The ice rattles in Billy’s fist, but he still doesn’t push Gene away, not even when he peels the shirt away to bare first Billy’s stomach and then the offending ribs. Billy looks down, too. It’s like a bottle of ink exploded under his skin.

“What the hell happened, dude?” He gets as far as grazing the outline of his bruises with one finger before Billy can’t take it anymore.

He squirms and pulls his shirt back down. “Shot my mouth off to someone I shouldn’t have.”

There’s an echo of what really went down somewhere inside that borderline truth. His dad asked him a question, and Billy took too long answering. He might’ve stopped at a slap, but Billy had to go and open up his fucking mouth. He should’ve known better, with Max and Susan out of the house. No witnesses.

“Were they a professional boxer? Because there’s no way a kid did this to you.”

“I’m not a kid,” Billy growls.

“You’ve got a curfew. You’re a kid,” Gene tells him, flat. He sits down carefully on the couch so he won’t jostle Billy and goes for the remote.

Billy stops him. “Leave it on. I’ve seen it.”

“Suit yourself.” Gene puts the remote back on the table, starts to relax, then gets up again.

 _“Gene,”_ Billy bites out, frustrated.

“What? You can’t watch a movie without popcorn. I’ll be right back. You want something else to drink?”

“I’ll have a beer if you got it.”

“Ten years from now you’re gonna have a huge gut like my Uncle Danny,” Gene teases, tripping and laughing when Billy kicks him as he passes. “I don’t know how you drink that shit, dude.”

“By drinking it,” Billy snaps. “You got any or not?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got what you want.”

Billy slumps back into the couch, eyes on the TV but only half watching. In a while the smell of butter cuts through the thick layer of curry spices. Gene comes back with a big bowl and a beer for Billy. He disappears back into the kitchen for something else and returns with a chunky plastic cup of something. He forgets to be gentle about plopping down onto the couch this time and apologizes profusely when he bumps Billy’s hurt side.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry. Jesus, man, are you sure you don’t wanna lie down? I can bring you a real pillow.”

“I’m fine.”

“Bullshit you’re fine. Here, just stretch out.” He sets the popcorn and his stupid Dodgers cup on the coffee table, probably anticipating a fight, and Billy’s ready to give him one until Gene kisses him right on his snarling mouth.

Even knowing what he’s up to doesn’t stop it from working. Gene gathers his knees up to swing his legs onto the couch, turning Billy the way he wants him, which also happens to be what Billy wants. When he’s laid out and pressed firmly into the misshapen cushions at his back, it’s what he wants. He knows it’s a trap, but that doesn’t stop him wanting it, and hell if he’s not gonna make Gene fucking pay for trying to make out with him halfway.

“Just take it easy,” he squeaks, taking Billy’s hand off him and casting out quickly to plant his elbow on the couch back.

“Make me.”

“You’re all banged up, dude. I’m not — ”

“What? You’re not what?” Billy breathes, bracing on his shoulders and rocking his hips. “Into it?”

“I’m — _I sat down_ too hard and I hurt you.”

Billy cranes his neck to flick his tongue at Gene’s upper lip. “Does it look like you’re hurting me? You want me to stop, tell me to stop.”

Gene’s eyebrows twist up on his face. Serves him right. If he didn’t want Billy under him like this, he didn’t have to fuckin’ put him there. It’s his own damn fault. Billy blinks innocently at him, gives his palm a good seeing-to with his tongue, and touches him so they’re skin to skin. Gene closes his eyes and ducks his head. He takes a sharp breath and shuffles down to press his forehead against Billy’s collar bone. His hair smells like a box of tea right when it’s first opened. Billy gets some of it in his mouth when Gene moves to kiss him again. That’s more like it.

“I’m close,” Gene sighs, swearing when Billy yanks his shirt up to his throat. “You — ”

Billy laughs, high and loud, when Gene comes on him. Laughs at the wrung out, helpless sound he makes and the way he falls off the couch trying not to land on Billy when his arms give out. Billy gives him a sharp smile when Gene finally manages to sit up.

“Look at that. You didn’t hurt me.”

“Asshole,” he mutters, smirking. He points his chin at the obvious bulge Billy’s sporting. “Want a hand with that?”

“You got something else you’d rather be doing?”

Gene looks over his shoulder at the TV where Ash and his buddies are stumbling upon the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis in the cabin cellar. Billy thinks he’s about to make a crack about wanting to watch the movie, but then he’s grabbing the remote again and muting the volume. He tosses it and climbs onto the couch between Billy’s legs.

“Hey, clean up your fuckin’ mess,” Billy says, gesturing at his chest.

Without any kind of complaint, Gene whips his shirt off and wipes him down with it. He wads it up, flings it in the direction of his bedroom, and gets to work returning the favor. Billy doesn’t know how he ever got so good with his mouth. He’s not bad himself, but Gene’s all finesse and the perfect amount of pressure and the pace he sets is always just a hair faster than what Billy wants, and somehow that’s even better. That it’s what Gene wants, that he wants it as much as Billy does. He pants out a warning and comes in Gene’s mouth with his eyes and mouth scrunched shut, and for a second — just one — everything else living in his skin with him feels muted and distant.

Gene clambers off the couch. A second later Billy hears him spitting in the toilet and washing his hands. He doesn’t bother putting on another shirt. Just comes back to the couch barefoot in his stonewash denim jeans and maneuvers in under Billy’s legs so they both fit. He unmutes the TV and takes up the bowl of popcorn. Casual. Like they didn’t just fuck on the couch.

“Gimme some of that.”

“Wash your hands and I will,” Gene says agreeably.

“Ugh, God,” Billy huffs, flopping back. “I just got comfortable.”

“ _Pobrecito_ ,” he coos, laughing and dodging the poorly timed kick to his face.

Billy gives in and sits up, and yeah, maybe it was a bit much, doing all that. He’s more than a little sore, and judging by the worried look Gene gives him, it shows. He rolls his eyes and pushes off the couch, muttering, “I’m _fine_.”

Gene looks up at him when he wobbles. “Got it?”

“Yeah, I got it,” Billy grumbles, walking stiffly to the bathroom.

He shuts the door behind him and gets a good look at his reflection. His cheek’s turning an eggplant purple with splotches of red peppered in here and there, and the bruising at the bridge of his nose is starting to seep up into the corners of his eyes. He washes his hands, dries off, and pulls the shirt up over his head. The bruises high up on his ribs looks worse in the dim yellow light, but _fuck it,_ Gene’s seen them already and it’s hot as hell in his apartment. Billy walks back out in just the shorts, looking around when he doesn’t see Gene on the couch. A few seconds later he hears him banging around in the kitchen.

“Dude, what’s your fuckin’ damage? You ever sit still?”

“No, not really.” Gene emerges with another baggie of ice and a sheepish look. “Jesus, does it hurt? It looks like it hurts.”

Billy takes the ice from him and doesn’t answer. Gene slips back into the kitchen instead of following him, and the next time he comes back he has a little bottle of Tylenol. He tosses it and Billy catches it, easing himself back down onto the couch. He pops two and takes a swig of whatever Gene poured for himself. On the TV, Ash’s girlfriend gets stabbed through the ankle.

“I got you a beer, man.”

Billy looks down at the cheerful Dodgers cup and brings it to his nose to smell it. It looks and smell like iced tea, but it’s got a taste. “The fuck is this?”

“Tea and lemonade. Cool, right? Read about it in a magazine. You want some?”

Billy frowns at him, takes another drink. “Yeah, fine.”

Gene gets up and goes. Again. Fucking guy. Billy brings his feet up onto the couch and holds the ice to his ribs, waiting for Gene to come back. He didn’t mind the movie being on before, but he’s not in any kind of mood to watch it by himself. He props the popcorn bowl in his lap just for something else to look at, and when Gene brings him a cup, he scoffs at the proudly clashing yellow and purple.

“Come on, even you can’t knock the Lakers.”

“What’s the point of sports if you’re not playing,” Billy mutters, drinking the stupid lemonade tea. He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, chasing the flavor. It’s different.

“It’s awesome, that’s the point.”

“If you say so. Just seems like a lotta noise for nothing.”

Gene laughs, gesturing at the TV. “Lots of things are noise. Doesn’t mean it’s for nothing.”

Billy rolls his eyes. He does like movies, and hell, he’d be kidding himself if he said it wasn’t exciting to have people in the stands cheering him on at games. Wouldn’t be fun for anyone if the crowd didn’t get hyped up watching. He gets it. Sort of.

“You think the guy that came up with this dropped acid when he was writing it?”

“Sam Raimi?” Billy asks distractedly, picking at a popcorn kernel that’s stuck in his teeth. “Nah, he got it from H.P. Lovecraft. Now that guy, who knows.”

Gene watches him for a second, smirking. It fades by degrees when Billy looks back at him. “H.P. Lovecraft, huh?”

“Yeah.”

He shakes his head and goes for a drink, but it does nothing to hide his smile.

 _“What?”_ Billy growls.

“Nothing, man. It’s cool when you know all this random shit.”

Billy rolls his eyes. He likes movies, and a lot of them are based on books. _Frankenstein, Dracula, The Exorcist, Blade Runner._ It’s not fucking rocket science.

“Hey, did something happen?” Gene asks, kicking his feet up on the coffee table.

“Told you. Shot my mouth off.”

“That’s it? You shot your mouth off?”

“To my dad,” Billy mumbles into his knuckles under the guise of eating more popcorn.

“To your — _your_ _dad_ did that to you?”

Billy shrugs, turning back to the movie. “Wasn’t the first time.”

“Jesus Christ. No wonder you look like you got hit by a car.”

“It’s not even that bad.”

“But Sam doesn’t seem like the type to — ”

“He’s not my dad.”

Gene’s face cycles through a few different emotions: clarity, relief, confusion again. “No shit? But you and Max are always together. I just thought — ”

His heart slams in his chest. “We’re not. We don’t even like each other. Doesn’t he tell you anything?”

“We’re not poker buddies. He just calls me up for odd jobs sometimes. Man, I can’t believe that about you and Max. You look so much alike. You don’t have the same mom?”

A pit sinks in Billy’s throat. “No.”

“Oh. My bad then. Sorry.”

Gene turns back to the movie, but Billy can tell he’s not really watching it. Billy’s not either, but he knows what part they’re at. He gets the beer he forgot to open, pops the tab, and slams it. Whatever warmth it puts in his belly isn’t enough.

“Stupid that they don’t just leave her,” he says, trading the crushed can for the drink Gene made for him.

“Who, Linda?” Gene asks, looking from Billy to the screen and back. “She’s his girlfriend.”

“Yeah, and she doesn’t make it.”

“They don’t know that, and even if they did, seriously?”

“Fuckin’ seriously. They try to take her, they die. They stay with her, they die. You know what the common denominator there is? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not that they die.”

“Scott gets fucked trying to leave,” Gene points out.

“So does Linda! Ash staying behind doesn’t do jack shit for her. She dies anyway and ends up trying to fuck him, too.”

“ _Because she’s_ _possessed_ , dude, _Jesus._ That’s not her fault! She didn’t have a head!”

“You’re telling me you wouldn’t ditch a girl to save your own skin in a horror movie.” He adds, at Gene’s incredulous scoff, “Or whoever.”

Gene shakes his head, casting around for an argument that won’t sound like bullshit. “I don’t know what I’d do. _No one_ knows, but you can’t just leave people for dead, man. What if it was you?”

“What if it was?” Billy repeats, not thinking about the ocean that nearly swallowed him whole and that would have if things had gone his way. “I don’t need anybody dying for me, especially not somebody I like. Fuck that. ‘Sides, you can’t save anyone if your bitch ass is dead.”

“Making that decision’s not supposed to be easy, man.”

“Oh, no?” Billy grabs a handful of popcorn and pops a piece into his mouth. “People always end up making it, though, don’t they?”

Scott’s dying on the TV, and Ash has no idea how much worse it’s about to get for him. Poor bastard.

“I’ll tell you what’s actually shitty about having to leave somebody behind,” he says, hiding behind a lofty, weightless tone he doesn’t feel anywhere else but in his voice. “Being the one who’s done and taking everybody else with you. If they got a chance and you don’t, let ‘em go.”

Gene’s got nothing to say to him after that, so Billy turns the volume up and pretends to be really invested in the movie. He’s not, by any means. It’s just a lot of demonic laughter and bad makeup and people soup. But he doesn’t want to sound like a bitch, so he ices his ribs and keeps his mouth shut. It’s pretty fuckin’ bleak, and hats off to Raimi because Lovecraft probably would’ve been proud. Sick motherfucker.

“Uh, do you wanna watch something else?”

“Not really,” Billy mumbles.

“Wanna… get high and play Monopoly?”

Billy scrunches his nose, and Gene flaps his mouth.

“Do you… wanna get high?”

He drops his shoulders. “Yeah.”

“Dope. Need a refill?” Gene holds out his hand to take the limp baggie of melted ice. “What a fucked up movie, man.”

“Why were you watching it then?”

Now Gene scrunches his nose. “Bruce Campbell’s hot.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Billy scowls.

“What? I offered to turn it off.”

Billy doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he shuts up and listens to Gene bang around in the kitchen some more. He gets bored waiting for him to come back and starts going through his shit while the credits roll. Billy sits crosslegged on the floor and starts flipping through the box of cassette tapes Gene keeps on the bottom shelf of the coffee table: The Grateful Dead, Black Sabbath, Rush, Santana. It’s not to his taste so much, but he’s never been all that big on music in general. He checks the dual tape decks on the stereo, opens them one at a time to see what’s been chambered up most recently. He’s got The Doors on the left side and a mixtape on the right labeled _Oldies_.

He plays the mixtape, and the music that filters through the speakers is sweeping and slow and nostalgic for a time Billy doesn’t remember. Like it was made in a bottle and sent across the sea, and Billy playing it here and now is the first time it’s tasting fresh air.

_Be kind to love  
_ _‘Cuz it’s delicate_

“You like that?” Gene asks, coming back and dropping a bunch of shit on the coffee table. He sits on the couch and starts packing a bowl. “My uncle Martin has this big trunk of records from way back in the day. He let me rip a bunch of ‘em.”

Billy hums, popping the top deck that plays vinyls. It’s empty.

“Here.” Gene knocks on the table to get Billy’s attention and blows smoke in Billy’s face when he goes to take the bowl from him. He waves his hand through it, sheepish. “Shit, my bad.”

“Whatever.”

He takes a big hit and kicks back on the floor with his shoulders bunched up against the couch. Ice melts between his ribs and his hand, and the music drones on, slowing in his head like molasses.

_But if you treat her wrong_  
 _One day she’ll be gone  
_ _You’ll find yourself all alone_

Ain’t that the truth. Ain’t it always.

Billy drops his head back to look at Gene where he’s spread out on the couch. “Hey.”

“What?”

“Can I crash here tonight?”

“Yeah, dude,” Gene mumbles. “Sorry about your dad, man.”

Not thinking about his dad at all, Billy says, “Yeah. Me, too.”

The mixtape plays, and Gene passes out on the couch. Billy eats the last of the popcorn, smokes the last of the weed, and holds the ice under his arm until every last bit of it melts down. He puts Gene’s tapes back, turns off the stereo and the TV, and dumps the water in the sink. The fucking ice tray is empty when he goes to get more.

“Thanks, dickhead,” he mutters, running it under the sink to fill it before he puts it back in the freezer. At least he’ll have some in the morning.

He wanders back out into the living room, and his eyes catch on the stack of magazines next to the box of tapes. Foggy but determined all the same, Billy starts rooting around in Gene’s shit again until he finds a beat-up phonebook from last year. He opens to the white pages and scans the columns for the name he wants. Right there in the middle of the page he sees it: _Bjerhammar, Sven and Maggie_. Billy scrounges around for a black marker and circles it, tears the page out, and folds it up. Gene probably won’t even notice.

Satisfied, he heads into Gene’s room. The door’s open, so he leaves it like that and lies down stiffly on the crappy little twin bed. The last time he slept over Gene had been wrapped around him just so he wouldn’t fall off the side. Billy had bitched him out for it at the time, but now he misses the feeling of a warm body squeezing in next to him. He tugs his borrowed shirt back on just to feel held and curls up on his side.

The cool night breeze washing in from the window doesn’t give him any relief from the hot, muggy air. Neither does the spinning weightlessness in his limbs. The bed’s empty, and he can’t get comfortable. He brings his knees up to his chest. Through the open window and the iron grate barring the screen from the outside, Billy can hear a cat yowling, the caterwaul of an ambulance, and women talking further up the street. Between the misty blue light and the sounds of every other thing that’s awake in the night with him, he has a strange feeling of being below the earth. Like he’s in that fucking cellar from the movie and he’s the one who’s not gonna live to see morning.

_It’s useless! Useless! In time it will come for him and then it will come for you!_

Bullshit it’s impossible to know ahead of time who lives and who gets the axe. Bullshit making the choice to cut people loose if it saves them shouldn’t be an easy one to make. Bullshit. His mom made that choice. She had to. He knows she had to.

Billy holds the square of paper out in front of his face, trying to redirect the chatter in his head elsewhere. Tries to remember what Sven said about putting down roots and loving someone and realizing there’s a place for him, somewhere, even if it’s not here, even if all he’s ever wanted is for it to be here. He’s not gonna fucking cry about his life being what it is. He’s not gonna cry about almost dying. Or about his dad beating the shit out of him or his mom leaving or Max hating him or Gene’s stupid-ass snoring in the next room. He’s not.

The folded up page crumples in his hand, and pain like choking grips him by the throat. He turns his face into Gene’s pillow and shuts his eyes against the swelling tide that comes to take him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song on the mixtape is Be Kind to Love by The Interpreters  
> Also gonna leave these here. Take care of yourselves, my loves:
> 
> https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org  
> National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 


	2. Back in the Real World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The same year Billy tries to kill himself, two kids go missing in Hawkins. Oddly enough, being trapped in a shadow world isn’t that different from drowning.
> 
> Barb finds Will in the Upside Down, and they survive together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) Mentions of emotionally abusive family dynamics  
> 2) Violence involving that sumbitch demogorgon  
> 3) Referenced homophobia because I am still not over the way Barb’s sexuality was handled

She’s never been this cold before. It sinks into her bones like a hot knife slicing through butter. She feels like she could crumble beneath how cold she is. Even Hawkins in the dead of winter doesn’t come close to this place, which strikes her as odd since it _is_ Hawkins, an icy double of it, in any case.

The thing following her doesn’t mind the cold. It’s like what Mrs. Norton said about evolution in science class last year, that humans used to be Endurance Hunters and that their prey normally died of exhaustion, no matter how much faster it might’ve been at the start. That’s this monster’s game, she thinks. It’ll stalk her until she can’t run anymore. And what then? Kill her? Maim her? Would there be anything left for her parents to bury? Would they ever know where to find her? She doesn’t know how long she’s been here or if anyone’s coming. It’s safer not to think about it. A while ago she thought she heard someone in the woods with her, but there was no way to know who or what it was. She’d been so afraid that she held herself as still as a corpse until the skittering moved away.

Maybe if she’d been armed she could’ve checked it out, but even then, the idea of making noise and drawing that _thing_ to her scares her half out of her mind. There’s no telling if anyone else is trapped in here with her. All she knows is that she’s _cold_. She’s never been so cold in all her life. She only feels warm later when she hears something she’d written off hearing ever again. Somewhere in the woods with her, someone screams — and not just anyone. Something in it jars her memory and jumpstarts her heart.

 _Nancy._ Nancy screaming. Nancy in this place with her. Barb runs toward the sound. She thinks she screams Nancy’s name, but she’s so tired she can’t tell.

The clamor fades back into silence, and Barb collapses, clutching at the earth and burying it beneath her fingernails. Her tears freeze on her cheeks and on the backs of her hands. That thing shrieks in the direction Nancy’s voice had been, but it’s the only thing making noise now. She doesn’t know what that means, but she knows she can’t think too hard about it just like she can’t think too hard about the blinding, cutting ache in her belly that might be hunger.

_“Psst.”_

The slow spinning gears in her mind stutter to a halt. She whips her head around, wide-eyed, hoping against hope that this isn’t the end. She doesn’t want the last thing she heard to have been Nancy’s screams, and she doesn’t want to die never knowing if she got out. In the patchy darkness, she makes out a small face peering out at her from the shadows and strains her eyes to see. The spiderweb fractures on the left lens of her glasses get in the way, but if she closes that eye she can pick out more distinctive features — the big, searching eyes and the high forehead of Will Byers.

He holds his finger to his lips then gestures for her to duck behind the tree line with him. She carefully gets to her feet and crosses over to him, crouching low and eventually sitting when he does, too. God, he’s alive.

They wait, listening for a third body moving around in the dark. The silence persists, huge and impossible and heavy just like this frozen air they’ve been choking down. Barb has so many questions for him, but she barely has breath enough to keep awake. She’s so tired. She can’t imagine how tired he is. When they’ve sat like that for long enough that the quiet begins to feel less oppressive, Will motions for them to start walking again. His tiny hand points in some direction that doesn’t look any different to her from the rest of their options.

Fear clenches in her throat, tight and painful like a fist, and she reaches for his hand. He startles, as unused to the touch as she is, but he doesn’t pull away. They walk together through the trees, Barb clutching Will’s hand like an overbearing parent on the first day of school. She feels a moment away from hysterics, but his hand caught up in hers gives her strength. The prospect of being alone again must be just as terrifying to him as it is to her.

By some miracle, they arrive at a house. She doesn’t know how he could’ve known to find anything out here, but after all, she came awake screaming in Steve Harrington’s pool — not _his_ pool, but a version of it. Just like this place, she realizes, watching Will Byers confidently and carefully pick his way down a hallway riddled with ash and debris. He leads her to a bedroom with lamps scattered everywhere on the floor and only then does he start to pull his hand away from hers. She releases him, reluctant to let go but starting to accept that he’s not going to up and vanish on her. He kneels beside the bed and roots around underneath it with one arm. Barb watches him produce first one battered boot and then a second.

She gapes at him, forgetting how to breathe for long uncounted seconds. He sits up on his knees and pushes them both toward her, watching her face attentively. That someone could be _so_ _patient_ after being trapped in this nightmare for as long as he has baffles her. His eyebrows twitch as she’s staring at him. He gets back to his feet and digs around in a drawer until he finds a balled up pair of socks to give to her.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

He whispers back, “You’re welcome.”

They sit on the floor side by side while Barb gets the socks and boots on her feet. They’re on the big side. She wonders if maybe they’re Jonathan’s.

“This is your house,” she says in a muted undertone, doing up the laces.

“Yeah. You’re Nancy Wheeler’s friend, aren’t you?”

She hums. “My name’s Barbara.”

“I’m Will.”

“I know.”

 _We all thought you were dead,_ she thinks but doesn’t say. How could she say that to a kid? How could she say it to him when people undoubtedly think the same about her?

“We have to stay hidden. If it comes, just run. Hide.”

“Where?”

The desperation rises in her throat again, building into something frighteningly close to a wail or a sob. She grits her teeth and makes herself breathe through it, not wanting to repay his kindness by getting them both killed.

Will’s small face is filled with shadows, and his eyes are exhausted, almost unseeing. He says, “Wherever you can.”

“How do I find you if I lose you?”

“Try to come here. There’s somewhere else I go, but if you get lost, come here. I’ll find you.”

Barb wonders distantly if he knows how brave he is. She’s older than him and she should be the adult here, maybe, but she doesn’t know these woods. She might know the road if she could get to it, but the trees all look the same to her. The sky just looks like a sky. She can’t pick out trails or directions or shortcuts, not like he can.

“We should go. My other hiding place is better.”

She almost asks why he brought her here instead, but then she flexes her toes in the boots he gave her. That seems like a sound enough explanation on its own until she hears it.

_“Will?”_

His expression thaws immediately, a spark returning to his eyes. He gets shakily to his feet and cautiously peeks his head out into the hallway. Barb follows a few steps behind him, quiet.

_“Will, are you there?”_

It breaks her heart that he doesn’t answer. He must’ve tried countless times before now if he doesn’t even bother anymore. Barb stands at the mouth of the hallway and looks on as Will approaches a wall she hadn’t noticed when they came in. There are letters painted on one wall and Christmas lights strung up over each row of letters. He presses his hand to the letter _Y_ , climbs up onto the couch to slap the _E_ , and sags forward into the cushions to tiredly palm the _S_.

_“Baby, we’re close, okay? We’re so close. Just hold on. Please just hold on.”_

He doesn’t look like he has the strength to press another message into the wall. Barb goes to him, boots clunking softly on the floorboards. She touches his shoulder. He’s got tears smeared all over his dirty face.

“You could tell her you’re here,” he whispers, hoarse and looking so, so small. Fragile.

She glances up at the wall, then checks around them. It seems impossible that the monster wouldn’t hear them bridging the gap in this way, yelling out across the void to be heard. Surely it can feel whatever ripples this miracle they have in front of them is casting off. Barb steps up onto the couch. The letters were harder for Will to reach easily due to their spread, but she’s got the reach for it. She’s never been quite as grateful for that as she is now.

 _H-O-L-L-A-N-D_ , she spells out carefully, so carefully.

 _“Will, what — Holland? Barbara_ _Holland? Barbara, is that you?”_

Barb makes a sound, just a suggestion of one. Not even a full breath of a sound. Will drops his head back to look the long way up at her. There’s a small, relieved smile on his face. It’s a triumph, this wall of words and possibility. When Barb gets out of this terrible place, she’s going to hug Joyce Byers until her arms give out, and she’s going to make sure Will is there to hug her, too. She doesn’t know how, but they’re getting out. They both are.

_“Just stay together, okay? Stay together and hold on. We’re coming to find you. We’ll find you, I promise.”_

Will edges off the couch like a slinky toppling itself to standing. He waves for Barb to follow him, and she does, though she doesn’t want to. She could stay here listening to Mrs. Byers croon sweet promises until the sound lulls her to sleep. The fact that he must want that at least as badly as she does wakes her up a little, but it doesn’t help her to feel any less cold. They slip through the backdoor and walk back out into the night hand in hand. Barb looks up at the sky, stomach sinking when all she sees is falling ash and blackness that goes on forever. In lieu of constellations, she picks out physical landmarks that will bring her back here like breadcrumbs in case she loses Will in the trees.

Their destination is a makeshift fortress. _Castle Byers_. Such a quintessentially childlike creation, and yet it’s the first of its kind she’s ever seen in person. Will crawls in first, and she crawls in after him. It isn’t warm, but it is a lee against the worst of the cold and that’s nothing to scoff at. The fort may even be warmer than the house for how much easier it is to huddle close and pretend the outside isn’t as vast or as frozen as it really is.

Barb’s cold — has been cold the entire time she’s been stuck here — but she’s still tense and locked tight against it. Will, on the other hand, is frightfully slack next to her. She doesn’t know how he’s managed to keep moving this long when he feels like he’s about to float away.

“Will,” she breathes, barely giving any voice to it at all for fear of being heard by something else. “Come here.”

He drops limply into her shoulder, and she can feel through her layers how cold he is. Barb shrugs her jacket off and wraps it around his shoulders. He doesn’t react to being jostled, and he doesn’t make a sound when she rubs her hands into his arms and across his back. For a long time he doesn’t move, but Barb keeps trying to force some warmth back into him. He shudders, lightly at first and then harder. She rocks back and forth to calm herself down and maybe to calm him, too.

“There,” she says, breath steaming and teeth chattering. “We’re getting out of here, okay? Both of us.”

“Both of us,” he grits out, trembling.

“That’s right.”

They stay like that in the cold, waiting dark, and the don’t venture out of the fort. Not for anything. Sometimes Will sings broken verses out of a song, and his soft voice carries like dandelions twirling away in the wind. Barb holds onto him. She tries to keep him warm and singing, but it’s not always evident how much it helps him. _He’s_ _freezing,_ slipping through her fingers a little more every hour like clouds of breath in this terrible wasteland. All they have in the fort is each other and a folded up blanket for Will to lay his head on. They share her jacket, and when Will sings about staying or going, Barb learns to sing along with him.

She’s sleepily cold and holding onto him when she hears someone calling her name. She squints through her cracked glasses, seeing someone. A girl.

_“Barbara? Will…”_

“He’s cold,” Barb murmurs. “He’s so cold.”

 _“She’s coming to get you,”_ she whispers _. “Just… hold on a little longer.”_

“Will, did you hear that?”

He stirs weakly in her arms. There are tired bruises under his eyes, purpling his eyelids, and hollowing his cheeks. In a small voice, he says, “Hurry.”

The world around them shakes and somewhere beyond the fort, the monster shrieks. Barb clutches Will to her, breathless and stricken with terror. The girl disperses, and their safe haven flies apart, pieces of splintered wood and torn cloth flying off in every direction.

Barb reaches out blindly in the wreckage until her fingers close around a piece of the devastated fort. It’s tapered at one end like a spear. She holds it up and thinks, distantly, that if she must die here, maybe she can take it with her. Maybe it will be enough to save Will. The dust settles, and the stench of mold wafts over her. A clawed talon-hand curls around Will’s shoulders, but he doesn’t move, not even when it prowls closer and its split, leathery face flutters, scenting him.

Dread grips Barb’s throat, squeezing tightly around her heart. She whispers, “No.”

It tightens its grip around Will’s shoulder and roars. Barb screams, too. She rams the sharp end of the plank into its gaping mouth, stabbing it deep in the gullet. It howls and strikes out at her, flinging her back like a toy. Everything goes black well before she hits the ground.

She’s still blinking back stars when she wakes up again. The thing is gone, and so is Will.

Barb sits up painfully and clutches helplessly at her knees. She didn’t see which way it went, and even if she had, she can barely see anything now. The one good lens is smashed, and the spiderweb fracture on her left lens isn’t doing much for her eyesight. She ignores the warm, creeping sensation of blood trickling down her neck and backtracks to the collapsed bones of the fort. In the heap, she feels around her jacket and another big stick to carry and starts walking. She counts outcroppings and breaks in the trees to try and find her way back to the house, listening all the while. It’s her only chance to find him. There’s a gnawing ache in the base of her skull, and ringing. She works her jaw a few times with her palm pressed to her ear. The piercing undertone sharpens momentarily and then drops off to a low, constant hum. The pain radiating through her skull almost makes her nauseous, but she presses on in spite of it.

The moment the trees thin out and the house comes into view, she breaks into a run up the unkempt driveway and bursts through the door. She already looked death in the face once today and stabbed it in the throat. God help that thing if she sees it again because Barb’ll take dying if it means she can hurt it again. Fucking creature.

She barrels down the hallway to the room with the lamps, holding her improvised weapon so tightly that her knuckles ache with it. She screams, _“Will!”_

“Barb?”

She runs back down the hall, rounds the corner into the kitchen, and stops short, seeing Mrs. Byers and Hop with Will laid out on the floor in front of them. He’s got a mask strapped to his face. The stick in her hand clatters against the tile like a toppled broom when she drops it.

“Is he…?”

Joyce smiles at Barb through her tears. “He’s okay! He’s okay, he’s okay. Come here, sweetie.”

“Oh, my God,” Hop says, getting a good long look at Barb in her smashed glasses and filthy clothes. “Here, kid. Put this on.”

The adrenaline spike that brought her this far fizzles out in a sigh. She tries not to fall down as she’s reaching for the mask, but the pain in her skull cascades and the single note buzzing in her ear is making it difficult to keep her feet on the ground. In the end she only half-collapses. It’s a step up from passing out, at least.

Hop gets the mask over her mouth. “There you go. Like that. Breathe for a minute, all right? Breathe, Barb.”

She holds the muzzle of the mask with one hand and reaches for Will with the other, holding his hand and his mom’s hand at the same time. It doesn’t feel wrong, after everything, to hold onto her while she holds onto him. Apparently Mrs. Byers feels the same way. She looks up from her son’s face into Barb’s eyes and _smiles_ , big and genuine and watery.

Tears stream down her face, but they do nothing to diminish the kindness in her eyes or in her voice when she whispers, “You’re so brave. You’re _so_ _brave_.”

“ _He saved me_ ,” Barb says into the mask, and now she’s crying, too.

When Will’s stable enough to be moved, Hop carefully lifts him off the ground and carries him outside. Mrs. Byers keeps both arms wrapped around Barb’s middle while they walk, and Barb keeps her fingers splayed across the metal grille of the mask, her other arm slung around Mrs. Byers’ narrow shoulders for support. On the other side — _out! They’re out!_ — Barb tries to take the mask off.

Joyce cuts in gently. “Don’t rush it, sweetie. Just take it slow.”

So Barb does. She blinks hard at the bright lights, shudders at the lukewarm air prickling her skin into goosebumps, and finally, swoons at the building, tremulous pain in her head. The heat in the air makes her feel dizzy, but more than that, it makes her aware of the blood gone tacky and cold on her face. The rest of it sticks to her collar and down the back of her shirt. She wobbles on her feet, and Mrs. Byers stumbles only a little bit keeping her steady.

“Hop,” she calls out, when they come to some stairs. “Let me take him.”

“Joyce — ”

“Hop,” she says again, some iron in her voice and a tiny bit of humor in the glance she cuts at the several inches Barb has on her.

Barb has to laugh, even though the action causes that migraine ache to stutter painfully down her neck and up her ears. Hop almost looks embarrassed, but he lets her carry Will up the short flight of stairs so he can have a shoulder free for Barb to brace herself against. They board an elevator after that, and Barb nearly faints twice on the ride up. When they’re topside at last, she can make out double glass doors across a white lobby and piercing headlights beyond them. The sky overhead is black and the air on her skin is warm. She manages to stay awake long enough for Hop to load her into an ambulance, but she doesn’t know what happens after that.

The very next thing she knows, she’s waking up in a clean bed under white lights. Her fingers and her head are bundled up in white gauze, and she’s _warm_. In a chair next to the bed are her parents, chins dropped on their chests and hands laced together in her father’s lap. Relief floods her throat, so sudden and thick that her heartbeat skips.

“Mom,” she wheezes. “Dad.”

Mom opens her eyes first, blinking sleepily and then animating all at once. She jerks upright, taking her hand back from Dad so she can hold Barb’s in both of hers. “Barbie,” she gasps, crying already. _“Barbara!”_

He’s up and out of his chair, too, tears on his face and gathering in his mustache. His hand finds her cheek, and even planted there, she can feel him trembling. “We love you, sweetheart,” he’s saying, again and again. “We love you so much.”

“You’re here, my baby. You’re safe. We’ve got you.”

Crying brings back the pain in her head, but she can’t make herself stop. Even as it travels down her spine and deep into her eardrums, she can’t stop. They hold her and shake and weep, and it’s such a gift just to hold someone and love them and to be loved back.

Some many minutes later, once her parents have cried themselves ragged and Barb’s headache has progressed to the point that she physically can’t shed another tear, the nurses come in. They check her vitals and ask if she feels well enough to take visitors.

“Yes,” she answers right away before Mom can advise against it. “Please?”

Dad sees her touching her face and produces a fresh pair of glasses from his breast pocket. They’re her backups, the ones she usually leaves at home in case she misplaces her everyday glasses. He places them on her face so gently, so carefully, that her heart breaks all over again. He and Mom stay in the room with her while Nancy, Jonathan, and Mrs. Byers are brought in.

Nancy cries out when she sees her and runs the rest of the way to her bed, dropping down into a hug that Barb returns. “We heard you on the radio when El found you. You and Will.”

“I heard you, too,” Barb whispers back. “You were screaming.”

She pulls back, searching Barb’s face with frantic, brimming eyes. “Barb, I’m — so sorry this happened. I — I shouldn’t have pressured you…”

“Nance, it’s okay.”

It’s not. Barb didn’t have time to think about the clenching pain in her chest sitting on the diving board over Steve Harrington’s stupid pool while she was in that other place, but she can remember it now watching Nancy’s tears spill out over her flushed cheeks. It twists like a knife in her heart, but her parents are in the room and she’s got an IV taped to the back of her hand to quell the quaking in her head. She can’t talk about it now.

She thinks Nancy gets that they’re going to later, though. It’s in her posture when she gets straightens out, chin high, shoulders wilted. Barb doesn’t feel good about it, but she didn’t feel good about slicing her thumb open to fit in and being left alone anyway when the blood rite didn’t take. Nancy nods and steps back to make room for Mrs. Byers. Jonathan hangs back awkwardly in the doorway, and Barb supposes that’s about right, as much as Barb feels intimately acquainted with both his mom and his brother.

“Hi, Barbara. How do you feel?” she asks, not crying anymore but smiling as brilliantly as ever.

Barb opens her mouth and all that comes out is a shaky sigh. She’s too weak for tears right now, which seems like a paradox, but there it is. Mrs. Byers seems to understand because she just reaches for Barb’s hand and holds it.

That’s a little shy of what Barb vowed to do when she was still in the other place, so she sits up as much as she can and hugs Joyce Byers with all of her diminished strength. “Where’s Will? Is he okay?”

She hugs Barb back, warm and comforting and safe. “He’s down the hall. He’s sleeping.”

“Good, I’m glad.”

“Thank you for watching over my boy,” Mrs. Byers whispers, rubbing comforting circles into Barb’s back. Her arms are warm and safe, and her hair smells like apples, her eyes shiny with unspilled tears when she finally pulls back. For maybe the second or third time, even though it feels much more familiar than that, she says, “You’re so brave.”

Barb looks down at her lap to hide her wince. She doesn’t want to say that she felt anything but brave clutching Will’s tiny hand in hers or stumbling after the ghost of his trail in those woods, alone and lost and bleeding. Even at the end when her fear was replaced with anger, she didn’t feel brave. Jonathan paces further into the room, hands shoved in his pockets. There’s a nervous, pinched expression on his face like he’s afraid of her or like he thinks she’ll be afraid of him. His voice is small when he finds it.

“He said you fought it.”

Mom stiffens from her perch by the wall. “Fought what? Barb?”

“An animal,” Nancy answers curtly, looking from them to Jonathan. “Probably a big dog.”

Jonathan’s harried glance in her direction becomes bolder when he swings it back toward Barb. He moves closer to the bed, holding his mom’s hand when she reaches for him. Earnestly, and still so softly, he says, “You were there for him when he needed you.”

Barb wonders why saying it makes his face so pale, but trying to focus on the unseen makes the backs of her eyes throb. She lets it go and holds her hand out to him instead, and he takes it. His hand is warm, maybe a little on the clammy side.

“Barbara Holland,” she says, a little shyly, second guessing the gesture. “You can call me Barb.”

They’ve never been formally introduced. She doesn’t go out of her way to meet new people, and he’s always been more inclined to keep to himself. His shock only lasts a few seconds before his expression brightens, warming like sun coming out from behind the clouds — like Will when he heard his mom calling for him in the other place.

He laughs, and his voice comes out deeper and more resonant, more like what she thinks he’s supposed to sound like. “Jonathan Byers.”

She smiles shakily and squeezes his hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Yeah.” He blinks back tears and rubs at his eyes when that doesn’t work. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”

He has a sweet smile, like his mom and like his brother. Not a bad trait, that. To have a smile that inspires peace and reassurance in those it’s pointed at. Barb notices Nancy noticing and feels her own expression falter. She pushes her glasses up her nose and averts her gaze, about to ask for some space when Mom beats her to it.

“I think that’s enough for now. Barbara needs to rest.”

“We’ll come see you again,” Mrs. Byers tells her, turning to her parents and adding, “if that’s all right.”

“Of course,” Dad answers easily, less bristles than Mom after whatever look she saw on Barb’s face. “We’ll be happy to see you here again.”

Barb whispers, “Thank you, Mrs. Byers.”

“Oh, sweetie, Joyce is fine. Feel better, okay? We’ll see you soon.”

She hugs Barb quickly, gently, and steps away, exiting out into the hallway with Jonathan, who waves before she loses sight of him. Nancy squeezes her hand with a weak smile and heads out after them. Mom and Dad give her time to breathe, and it’s only after Dad’s left on a food run that Mom sits next to Barb on the little bed. She brushes her knuckles on Barb’s cheek, a small, sad smile on her face.

“Are you okay, baby?”

Barb fidgets and stares at her hands. She feels really not-okay for a number of reasons, but she knows why Mom’s asking. She’s proven right a second later.

“Did you and Nancy fight? Before all this?”

“Sort of.”

“Do you think you’ll make up with her?”

“Yeah. Just, not right now.”

“Does this have to do with that boy she started dating?”

“ _No,”_ Barb says, looking away. “I don’t know, kind of…”

“Well, he seemed nice enough. Sweet. I wasn’t sure, when I saw him come in.”

Barb blinks, confused, trying to remember if Steve came in and she missed him. She realizes, after probably too long puzzling over it, that Mom’s not talking about Steve at all. “What, Jonathan? No, Mom. Nancy’s not with him.”

“I wonder if she knows that, the way she was looking at him,” Mom murmurs in an offhanded way.

She looks at Barb then, soft and nonjudgemental. _Understanding_ in a way that first confuses and then shocks her. Barb’s face burns and she jerks away, biting her lip hard enough to split it.

“Barbie, don’t. It’s okay, baby. You’re okay.”

Barb rubs her eyes beneath her glasses, head bowed. She hadn’t taken the time to wonder what people might’ve been saying while she was missing, outside of just speculating about whether she was dead or just missing. She doesn’t want to think about it now either, but she _knows_ somehow. People have always whispered one thing in particular about her whenever they thought she couldn’t hear, and it just varied from day to day whether they were talking about her hair or her friendship with Nancy. God, and the last place anyone knew to look for her was Steve Harrington’s house. It must’ve looked like she ran away on purpose because that final rejection was just too much. What would her parents have felt hearing that?

“Mom, it’s not — _it’s not_ _like that_. I’m not — ”

“You’re my daughter, that’s what you are.”

Barb stops and looks up. She feels a few hot tears jump down her cheeks.

“You don’t have to explain anything to me, Barbie. You can, but you don’t have to.”

The painful throbbing at the base of her skull ebbs. Barb scrubs at the tears gathered beneath her jaw and says, “I didn’t run away.”

Mom grabs her hand. “I know you didn’t.”

Panic rises in her throat again. “And we fought that night, but it didn’t have anything to do with Steve. It felt like it did at the time, but it wasn’t anything he did.” Barb looks away again, and Mom squeezes her hand, listening. “We were at his house when it happened. He said he was having a party, but it was just us and another couple there, so it… I didn’t fit in, and no one said so or acted like they didn’t want me there, but I could tell they only invited me because of Nancy, and then she told me to go home, which is what I wanted anyway, but it — ” Barb bites her lip, tasting copper and remembering the bloom of blood on her thumb that night. “It felt like she was telling me I really _didn’t_ belong there.”

“I’m sorry, baby.”

Barb shakes her head. “I know that we… _I_ spend a lot of time with Nancy, and maybe this was always gonna happen. Us outgrowing each other.”

“Don’t you say that. Your friends aren’t clothes you wear for a while and then throw out. That’s not who you are, not either of you. Now I know Nancy’s your best friend, but obviously she hurt you. It’s okay if you're upset, Barb.”

“But how can I just expect things to stay the same? That’s not fair.”

“That’s not what we’re talking about, baby. Are both of you going to be doing a lot of changing and growing as you get older? Yes, you are. That’s life, but that’s not what I heard you say.”

Barb had been ready to accept it as the new norm, moving forward. She figured, even if Nancy did feel bad about bringing her to Steve Harrington’s that night, she might not be sorry for the rest of it. It hurts to think that, but what can Barb really say for certain about her friendship with Nancy except for the terrible way they’d left things? It could’ve been the end of everything for Barb that night. And for what? A boy? A can of beer?

“Do you remember when we used to have your father’s family over for Christmas dinner every year? His mother would find any reason to pick a fight with him, and she would win every single time. I think he was pretty resigned to it, but the worst it ever got was when she tried to get him to unlock the liquor cabinet. Do you remember? That was the year she said all those awful things about my dress.”

She remembers. Grandma Holland didn’t touch her food at all that night except to push it around on the plate. Barb’s never been able to understand why she made such a big deal about the liquor cabinet. Her parents don’t drink much, and even then, it’s only when Barb’s not around to see. They especially never offer her any, and that was something else Grandma Holland had said. After everyone left but before they opened presents, Barb found Dad crying in his and Mom's bedroom. He hadn’t asked her to leave, but he hadn’t acknowledged the tears on his face either, not even when they kept coming. Barb had put her arms around him, afraid without knowing why, and after a long time without saying anything, he wrapped his arms around her, too.

“Hurting someone is never okay, Barb. No matter how much you say you love them.”

“Then what do I do about it?”

“Baby,” Mom sighs, smiling a little and holding Barb’s cheek. “Just tell her how you feel.”

Barb’s heart skips a beat. She swallows. “How I feel?”

“Nancy’s not like Grandma Holland, Barbie. You wouldn’t have been her friend all this time if she was. Now she’s a good girl, I know she is, but first love’s always hard. You’ll see. Just give it time.”

Barb turns away and bunches up the blanket in her hands. She tries for words a few times, but it all comes out in whispers, little more than air squeezed out of her while her heart races. “I know.”

She stares at the white blanket in her lap, not sure if she’s been heard or if that’s even what she wanted. They sort of danced around this truth earlier, but they didn’t put it into words. It was still something they could wish into nonexistence by choosing not to address it. But now it’s been said, in as few words as possible, but said all the same. Mom doesn’t ask her to repeat herself. She doesn’t say anything, so Barb risks looking up.

She’s smiling, soft and fond. Her eyes glisten. “Would you look at that,” she whispers, reaching for Barb’s hand. “Still my daughter.”

Barb doesn’t mean to, but she cries. She cries, and Mom gets up out of her seat to hug her tightly. It’s every skinned knee and hurtful comment, not erased, but soothed and acknowledged. Held.

“I know she’s not your favorite person right now, but she took it really hard, Barb.” Her voice breaks. “When you didn’t come home, she never stopped looking for you. She even took it to the police.”

“Did you talk to them, too?”

“Oh, yes, _Hawkins’ Finest_. Finest waste of anyone’s time, more like. They were so quick to write you off, those blockheads. I told them, not my Barb. She wouldn’t just go, not without telling me.”

“Did they say anything else?”

Mom watches her, a little pinch coming up between her eyebrows. “Yes, they did.”

“What was it?” Barb asks, wringing her hands in her lap.

“Something so tactless they’re lucky I didn’t take your father’s nightstick and chase them out of the house with it. You were gone — _you were in_ _danger_ — and all they wanted to do was blame it on you so they wouldn’t look utterly incapable of doing their jobs. The nerve of some men, Barb, and to call themselves police officers. As if they ever serve and protect anyone but themselves.”

Barb remembers Hop giving her an oxygen mask so she could breathe and carrying her and Will to safety. “Hop’s not so bad.”

“He brought you home, and I’m grateful to him for that. Him and Joyce Byers.”

“And Will.”

Her mom smiles. “That boy is just the sweetest in the world, isn’t he?”

“Have you been to see him?”

“Yes, he was very polite, and he wouldn’t stop asking about you.”

“What? Really?”

“Well, your head injury… you hadn’t woken up yet. Joyce and her oldest — what was his name? Jonathan? They came over and asked if we wanted to visit with them. Your father stayed here with you, but I went.”

Barb’s chest aches. She hasn’t been able to see Will yet, what with both of them being confined to their respective rooms.

“He’s a tiny little thing, isn’t he?”

Barb smothers a laugh. A dried tear track itches on her cheek. “Look how tall his brother is. He’s got time.”

“I think it suits him! But maybe you’re right, Barbie. Maybe he’ll get the growth spurt that got you.”

When Dad comes back later with burgers, Barb steals his fries and Mom gives him the pickles from her burger. It’s not a home cooked meal at the dinner table, but they’re together. Dad gets ketchup on his nose and Mom drops a french fry in her lap. Barb wouldn’t trade it for anything.

As eager as she is to go home, she’s stuck on bedrest for another week. The doctors want to monitor her head injury since her ears keep ringing, so there’s really no arguing with them. Will gets to leave before she does, but Joyce brings him by Barb’s room before she takes him home. He has a small, shy smile for her that she returns in kind.

“Hey, Will.”

“Hi, Barb.”

“You look better.”

“So do you.”

“Thanks to you,” she tells him, raising her eyebrows for emphasis.

His face flares red and his glance skitters away from her. “I guess.”

Joyce nudges his arm, smiling down at his flustered, sour expression. She ruffles his hair and murmurs, “Tell her what you told me, sweetie.”

Will makes a muted sound of protest. “Mom…”

“Tell her what you told me. It’s okay.”

He bounces on his heels slightly like he’s thinking about bolting. Barb’s about to tell him it’s fine and he doesn’t have to tell her anything, but then he launches himself at her in a hug. She catches him automatically, still used to holding him after their shared eternity in the fort.

“You’re cool,” Will says thickly. Like it’s a secret he lowers his voice to add, “And you saved me, too.”

Barb’s voice breaks and she holds on tighter. “I said we’d both get out, didn’t I?”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

She hears and feels his breath crackling in his lungs, sticking and making him cough. Joyce helps him down from the bed. He stops to catch his breath once he’s back on his feet.

“Don’t forget about me now that you’re back in the real world, okay?” Barb asks, kidding but not as much as she’d like.

His face goes stony and serious, and it makes him look remarkably like his brother. “No, I won’t.”

Barb laughs, eyes stinging. Joyce bends down to give her a hug, and the tears spring free. There’s roaring in her ears as they spill over.

“We’ll see you soon, okay, Barb?”

She feels okay watching them leave. The quiet of her room when it’s just her in it doesn’t frighten her, not when she can distract herself with warm blankets and sweet treats Mom smuggles in from home, but that changes when she’s asleep. She dreams she’s running through the hospital, and it’s coming for her. She runs and runs, and the hallway stretches on forever, the thing screaming after her, its claws ripping at her hospital gown. Barb screams, too, but she wakes before it gets her. She sits up and pushes the heart monitor clip off of her finger. It wasn’t real. It didn’t get her. She pulls her knees to her chest, trying to keep from crying.

It was easier in the other place to deal with this fear. The threat was real there, and hiding from it meant surviving, but she can’t hide from it now, not when it’s attacking from inside her mind. Barb takes her glasses off to rub at her eyes. She pushes a hand through her hair, rocking in place and whispering to herself.

_Darling, you gotta let me know  
_ _Should I stay or should I go?  
_ _If you say that you are mine  
_ _I’ll be here till the end of time_  
_So you got to let me know  
_ _Should I stay or should I go?_

That song kept them alive, and even now, it feels life-giving. A parachute to slow her fall and snap her mind out of the nightmare. She drops her hands between her knees on the bed, all the tension coming loose. She’s going to have to ask Will what that song is so she can learn the rest of the words. There’s a knock on her door, and she looks up. Standing in the doorway without coming in, is Steve Harrington.

“Hey, Barb. How, uh, how’re you doing?”

Barb stares at him until he starts to fidget, and then she realizes that she’s making him nervous. She clears her throat and looks away, reaching for her glasses. “What are you doing here?”

There’s a beat of silence, and then another. She can practically hear him thinking.

“I brought your shoes back. You left them at my house when you… uh, anyway, Nancy said you were wearing Byers’ boots when they found you, so… can I — or I mean, I can leave ‘em here by the door if you don’t want me to come in.”

“If Nancy put you up to this,” Barb starts, still not looking at him.

“No! No, hey, look. She didn’t.” He sighs heavily, and when Barb glances at him, he almost seems to shrink down in size at the end of it. Bitterly, he adds, “If she had, I doubt I’d’ve come. ’S not really my style.” He seems surprised to find Barb staring at him when he looks up again.

“If it’s not your style and I’m not your type, then why did you come?”

She’s not proud of making him flinch, but she doesn’t feel like she can be any other way to him before she knows what he’s looking to gain by darkening her door. Rationally, she knows it’s not his fault she got swept away into that other place with Will. It’s not _anyone’s_ fault, but getting angry at Steve, especially when he doesn’t have the good sense to stay away, feels good. His expression isn’t unlike the one her dad wore when Barb came home from her first day of middle school with gum in her hair. Not like he pities her, but like he’s never known what it is to feel helpless before this moment, right now.

“I’m sorry,” he says, just like her dad did when he cut the gum out of her hair.

_I’m sorry, honey._

Barb keeps staring at him without speaking. She can see his knuckles pinch white around her shoelaces.

“I’m sorry, okay? We left you alone, and… and then you went missing, and now you’re in the hospital looking like you got hit by a car, and I’m — I’ll go, I’m going, just.” He raises his hands, her shoes bobbing, tied together at the laces. “They’re gonna be right here against the wall, okay?”

She wonders how long it took him to notice her shoes outside his pool. Did Nancy find them and tie them together? No, if she’d found them, she would’ve brought them herself. Barb’s still trying to decide whether she wanted an apology from him when he nods and takes her silence as a dismissal. He leans over to set her shoes on the floor without another word and backs out into the hallway without meeting her eyes again.

“Steve,” Barb says, holding his gaze when it snaps up to hers.

He’s all wide eyes and soft curiosity. He edges back into the doorway while the static in her mind gets weaker and weaker. She opens her mouth to tell him she’s not mad at him — because she knows she shouldn’t be — but her face is burning and her hands are sweating, and she can’t make herself say it. Not even for as harmless as he looks leaned up against the doorjamb, and not even for as genuine as his remorse seems. Because it’s the same as it is with Nancy. She doesn’t blame them, but what happened to her was so much worse than if she’d just gotten ditched at a party, and she’s not ready to tell Nancy that. It means too much. Steve Harrington, though. Barb doesn’t want to hurt him anymore than she wants to hurt Nancy, but she’s not afraid of hurting him.

“If not for Will Byers, I would be dead right now,” she tells him, shuddering and turning away from the stricken look on his face. “I know you’re not the reason this happened to me. It’s not your fault, I know that.”

Steve’s got his arms crossed tightly across his chest and his head down. He doesn’t try once to interrupt her, not even when that helpless look comes back into his face. He’s flushed and clearly upset, but he’s still just standing there. Still just letting her talk.

“I guess part of me’s just angry about how it happened.”

Steve nods and rocks on his heels, reminding her of Will and all his restless, nervous energy. His arms tighten around himself, and he asks, quietly, “Is there… a part of you that’s not angry?”

Just having put all of it into words for someone to hear, she does feel lighter, vindicated, even. She holds up one hand, pinching her thumb and forefinger together, smiling just a little. Just enough. Just because she can, and it’s worth it.

The slack, unguarded hope on his face tightens with surprise, and then he laughs, quiet and startled. He looks more like the guy she remembers, smiling like that, but at the same time, not like him at all. “Okay,” he murmurs, still holding onto himself and still smiling, though it’s smaller now. “I can work with that.”

She squints at him a little where he’s huddled into himself. He looks like a kid and not like the cocky, swaggering jock she keeps expecting to make an appearance. The fact that he’s here at all and listening to her doesn’t feel like familiar territory — not that he was ever unkind to her. Just impersonal, politely accommodating in that sparkling, artificial way the waitstaff at a restaurant is paid to be. Steve Harrington as Barb knew him read more as a clone than his own person. Whoever he needed to be at any given moment to get or look like whatever it was fashionable to have or be. She thought he was empty, but she doesn’t think that anymore.

“You know,” she starts. “You’re not who I thought you were.”

Steve shrugs, uncoils his arms from around his chest, and pockets his hands. He sighs and says, with more of that subtle self-deprecation she’d heard before, “Yeah, I am.”

“You’re not.”

He watches her for a moment and then his eyes skitter away. His smile turns rueful. “You are, for what it’s worth. I mean, I guess I only know what Nancy’s told me, but… she was right.”

“She usually is.”

That gets another smile from him, a bigger one. Calmer.

“Thanks for bringing my shoes back,” she says — because it’s easier than facing that smile.

“Oh, yeah, you’re welcome.” He gestures vaguely with his hands, despite both of them still being shoved down into his jacket. “And hey, um, I know you’ve got Nancy and Mrs. Byers and your parents and all, but if you ever need anything and the not-angry part of you gets any bigger, gimme a call. I won’t hold my breath,” he rushes to add. “No pressure. Just, if you need anything. Cool?”

“Yeah,” she says, reluctantly charmed. “We’re cool.”

Steve holds up his hand in a wave and sees himself out. She catalogues the empty doorway and her shoes placed neatly against the wall. The pressure in her chest eases. She takes off her glasses and lies down to try falling back asleep.

She’s ready to go home.


	3. Worth Giving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The monsters are gone, and her family is safe. They’ve earned this chance to be quiet, haven’t they? After everything they’ve been through?
> 
> It’s Christmas at the Byers House!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter:  
> 1) None! It's Christmas in April, my dudes.  
> 2) Don't forget to stay hydrated out there. <3

It’s still dark outside when Joyce wakes up on Christmas Day. She has the holiday off and so does Jonathan, so she doesn’t have anywhere to be or anything to hurry up and do. Coffee and breakfast can wait. Getting dressed for the day can wait.

Snow falls outside, reminding her of the cold and damp of that other place. She rubs her hands over her face and closes her eyes. They survived. They all did. There’s no use getting upset now. Will’s safe and warm in his bed. Jonathan, too. Her family’s safe. No matter how ugly it got and no matter how deep into the nightmare she had to go, it was never going to end any differently.

She swings her legs over the edge of the bed and feels around in the dark for her slippers. There’s no harm checking in on Will, just to make sure. She’s not worried about him, necessarily, except in the one way she’ll always be worried about him. He’s asleep with his back to the door when she looks into his room. The blanket’s slipping off his shoulder and his hair is a mess on the pillow. She’s overcome just looking at him. However big he gets and however far away from her his dreams and his heart take him, part of him will always be as small and precious to her as the day he was born. The same goes for Jonathan.

Joyce climbs into bed behind him, and Will snuffles but doesn’t wake. She wraps him up in her arms and falls asleep breathing in the smell of his hair. The sky’s turning a pale blue through the window when she wakes however many hours later, still holding onto Will. He’s awake, too, and blinking sleepily over her shoulder at the sound of the door creaking open. She brushes her fingers through his hair, and the mattress behind her dips.

“You guys are so lazy,” Will yawns, right before closing his eyes again.

Jonathan laughs and drapes an arm around her middle. “Takes one to know one. I’ll make breakfast, okay, Mom? Don’t worry about it.”

“I want eggs in a frame.”

Joyce hums. “Good idea, baby.”

“And coffee?” Jonathan yawns this time.

“Mmhmm,” she hums.

“Bacon, too.”

“Anything else?”

“Orange juice,” Will mumbles.

Joyce covers Jonathan’s hand with her own. He’s warm and probably crawled out of bed right before coming to find them. Will falls back asleep not long after that, and Joyce must, too. She can smell coffee brewing in the kitchen the next time she blinks awake, sunlight streaming into Will’s room. It must be really late in the morning.

“Ready to get up, sweetie?”

He rubs his eye with a knuckle. “Uh huh. I’m hungry.”

“Let’s go check on your brother then.”

Will rolls out of bed and finds a knitted pullover to wear before following her out into the hallway. Jonathan’s already got a mug of coffee set out on the counter. He pours another one for her when she gets to the table.

“Thank you, sweetie.”

He hums and flashes a soft smile at her and Will both. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” Will echoes.

They have bacon and eggs in frames, just like they said they would. The coffee’s perfect, and the food’s great. Between the pajamas and the bed hair, her boys look the way she sees them all the time, young, soft, sweet.

“Do you think you’ll see your friends today, sweetie?” she asks Will, blowing steam off the surface of her coffee.

“No, everyone’s got plans with their family.”

“We didn’t plan anything,” Jonathan murmurs. “But we’re together.”

“Yeah. I have a present for you, by the way. Just a drawing I made.”

Jonathan ducks his head to catch his brother’s eyes and smiles. “I’m sure I’ll love it.”

Will shrugs, but a smile forms on his lips all the same. Joyce pushes a hand through his hair, loving him and loving Jonathan with everything she has.

“Well? You’re not gonna make me wait to see it, are you?” Jonathan teases.

Smile spreading, Will rolls his eyes and slips out of his chair to jog down the hallway to his room. Jonathan tops off their coffee while they’re waiting for Will to get back.

“That reminds me, you still haven’t let me see that camera Nancy gave you.”

“Technically, it was from Steve,” he mutters, staring down at his hands to avoid her eyes. “Definitely her idea, though.”

“That was nice of her,” she muses, remembering the way Nancy looked at him at the hospital.

His face goes tomato red. He sighs and hides behind his mug.

“It’s not a big deal,” Will warns, shuffling back into the kitchen with something held behind his back. He hands over a drawing that fills the entire page. “But I thought you might like it.”

Jonathan holds it up, and several emotions flicker across his face. Joyce leans in and angles her head to try and see. He glances up at her and turns it around, a startled look of pride settling in over his features. The scene Will drew shows three people, clearly recognizable as Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve. Nancy’s on the left holding a gun in the safety position, Steve’s on the right brandishing a baseball bat, and Jonathan’s in the middle with fire coming out of his hand. They’re shrouded in darkness, illuminated by the flaming lighter and dozens of surrounding Christmas lights. Will’s been good with colors ever since his first box of crayons, but the attention to detail here is incredible.

“Sweetie, this is amazing.”

Will looks up from where Jonathan’s closing him in a hug. He grins, bashful but obviously pleased. “I guess.”

“It’s great. We’ll have to show Nancy.”

“What about Steve?”

Jonathan shrugs, but the calm, happy smile on his face doesn’t fade. “Yeah, we should show him, too. He’ll like what you did with his hair.”

Will snorts and takes the drawing back to look at his handiwork. “Do you want me to hold onto it?”

“No, I think we should hang it up. Help me find a place for it?”

“Okay.”

Joyce watches them pick a spot on the wall to pin it. When they get back to the table, they divide the work of clearing the table and washing the dishes. She switches the TV on in the living room so that _A Christmas Carol_ plays the background.

* * *

Later in the afternoon the doorbell rings. They’re not expecting anyone, but Joyce wonders if it might be Hop checking in on them. She opens the door, pleasantly surprised at who she sees instead.

“Barb! Hi!”

“Hi, Joyce! Merry Christmas!” she gushes, balancing a small bundle of neatly wrapped gifts in her arms. She looks a lot better than she did the last time Joyce saw her, no more dark circles under her eyes or scrapes marking up her face.

“Merry Christmas! Gosh, come in, please. It’s cold out there.”

“Thanks. I have presents!”

“Presents?” Will pokes his head out from the kitchen where he and Jonathan have been baking cookies. “Barb!”

Her face lights up. “Hey! Yes, presents! For you! Hi, Jonathan.”

“Hey, Barb. We’re making cookies. Do you want some? Chocolate chip.”

“Yes, please! Thank you.”

“Here, let me take your coat.” Joyce hangs it up by the door and takes the colorfully wrapped boxes off Barb’s hands while she unlaces her boots. “Oh, thank you for doing that.”

“Your floors are so nice. I’d hate to track mud everywhere.”

Will balances the three boxes in his arms when they’re passed over to him and carries them to the coffee table. He sets them down, looks carefully at all three, and picks up the one that must be addressed to him. “Can I open it now?”

Barb pulls a boot off and glances in the direction of his voice. “Yeah, of course.”

Joyce walks over behind the couch to watch him neatly pull the tape back without tearing it. She can see from where she’s standing that the other two boxes are addressed to her and Jonathan.

“Oh, gosh, you’re one of those,” Barb muses, leaning her elbows against the couch back.

“Well! It’s nice. I don’t wanna rip it.”

A smaller wrapped package drops out of the bigger one Will’s working on, and he fumbles to catch it. He pulls a case out from beneath the boxy shell of the paper and examines it, the smaller wrapped present stuffed under his arm for later. The writing on the back reads _M. Graham Watercolors._

“A painting set?” she asks, looking over at Barb.

“I know you’re a crayon guy,” Barb says, starting to apologize.

Will shakes his head, already starting in on the thin paper barrier separating him from a new arsenal of colors. “I might be a paint guy. I’ve never tried it.”

“Wow, look how sharp they are,” Jonathan remarks, walking up behind him. “Imagine the damage you could do with those.”

Will runs a finger over the swatches inside the box like he’s memorizing the color wheel available to him in these new paints: lemon yellow, bright orange, dusty burgundy, deep purple, royal blue, forest green, earthy brown, shimmering gold, jet black, and white.

“The brushes are under your arm,” Barb tells him, pointing at the wrapped bundle.

Surprised — that really doesn’t begin to cover it — Will says, “Thank you.”

She smiles, soft. “I hope you like them.”

He puts the paints and the brushes on the table and walks around the couch to hug her. Jonathan hands Joyce her present and unwraps the one with his name on it.

“You got me a camera case,” he says, lifting it out of the waxy red paper.

“Nancy told me you got a new one. I thought maybe you could use something to carry it around.”

“It’s really nice, Barb, thanks. Mom, open yours.”

Joyce peels the wrapping paper back and drops it over the back of the couch to toss later. The small wooden box left behind opens to a stainless steel pocket knife on a braided leather cord. She lifts it out of the box and checks the blade. It’s a good length and easy to hide even when extended. Judging by the length of the cord, it’s meant to be worn as a necklace.

“Oh, wow. The handle on this is beautiful.”

“Can I see?”

Joyce angles the blade away from Will and lets him look at the honey-colored pearl inlay set into the handle. He traces his fingertips over it and takes his hand away without touching the blade. Jonathan comes around behind the couch to inspect it, too.

“In case you can’t get to a gun in time,” Will says, so gravely and matter-of-factly that Joyce, all over again as if for the first time, wants to get her hands on everyone who had a hand in taking him from her. Will glances up at Barb, none of that serious, near-death edge touching the excitement in his eyes. “It’s pretty, Barb.”

She smiles softly at him and then a bit more nervously at Joyce. “I didn’t know if it was appropriate. My dad let me have his nightstick, and carrying that around helps me feel safe, but… when I tried to think of something worth giving you — something you could _use_ — I thought, maybe I’m not the only one who feels better having more than just my fists to defend myself.”

 _This time_ , Joyce thinks. _In case you can’t get to a gun in time._

And she knows by now that Will made his last stand in the shed out back before that terrible thing took him. He told her. She folds the blade back into the handle and nods, knowing what it means to accept a gift like this.

“I’ll keep it on me all the time, Barb. Thank you.”

Barb presses her lips together and holds her hands out to cover Joyce’s. “I hope you never have to use it.”

“Mom knows how if she has to,” Jonathan says, going around and collecting the discarded wrapping paper. “Hey, are you gonna keep these?”

“Yeah, I’ll get ‘em.” Will rounds the couch and grabs up the neatly folded lengths of wrapping paper from his kit of colors and brushes. “Check the oven?”

Jonathan sets his camera bag on the couch and slips into the kitchen. Will ducks down the hallway into his room with a leaning tower of wrapping paper piled high in his arms. Barb grins and lets go of Joyce’s hands.

“I guess you guys opened the rest of your presents already?” she asks, gesturing at the tree.

“At midnight. The boys always stay up for it. I guess that’s become our tradition.”

“Christmas morning’s the big deal at my house. My mom bakes a ton of cookies, my dad stays in his pajamas all day, we watch Christmas movies.”

“We’re pretty similar then,” Jonathan says, coming back into the living room still wearing oven mitts. “They’re just cooling. You’re not in a hurry to get back, are you?”

“No, my parents know I’m here. I just need to be home for dinner later.”

“Hey, Barb,” Will calls out, coming back into the living room. “Do you know how to use these?”

“Yeah! Do you wanna try ‘em out? We’ll see what you come up with.”

That’s how Joyce spends Christmas Day curled up on the couch with Jonathan watching Will and Barb try out the watercolors. Together they paint a landscape of blues, greens, and yellows. Joyce has only ever seen Will use pencils and crayons, so she’s excited to see the kind of art he makes with his new materials. She knows he has a tendency to write himself off, but there won’t be much he can say against his talents when he winds up having a flair for painting, too, and she’s sure that he will. He’s always been able to see beauty in strange places and reproduce it in his own special way.

Later, after Barb’s left to be with her family and Joyce is just finishing up with dinner, loses track of the boys. Jonathan comes when she calls him, but Will doesn’t. She nearly breaks the bathroom door down trying to get to him.

“What are you doing?” she asks, heart in her throat.

He blinks at her. “Peeing?”

“Okay, well… dinner’s ready. Sorry, baby.”

Jonathan’s seated at the table with a robe thrown on over his pajamas. He looks up at her, worried. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. I’m just… jumpy, I guess. It’s driving him crazy, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, he hates it,” Jonathan confirms, smiling wistfully. “But that’s nothing new.”

“I know, he’s always hated being fussed over.” She drapes a paper towel over her knee and smooths it with her hands, staring down into her lap. “ _I know_. All he’s ever wanted is to be normal, whatever that even means.”

“He’ll get his chance, Mom. There’s still time.”

She nods, reaching across the table to hold his hand. Will pulls out the chair next to hers.

“Are you okay?” he asks, in that tone he gets sometimes, patient but unhappy, long-suffering. “I didn’t think I took that long in the bathroom.”

Joyce pushes her hand through his hair and smiles. “Everybody’s okay, sweetie.”

His eyes, always so wise, shine when he returns her smile. “Okay. What did you end up making? It smells good.”

“Baked ham, mashed potatoes, green beans,” Jonathan says, passing the covered bowl of biscuits so Will can grab one. “The hits.”

“Cool. Can you pass the potatoes, Mom? Thanks.”

She lets herself appreciate that they can have this. That they can be together, here and now, healthy and happy, sharing this meal. She tells herself it’s going to last. It will, this time.


	4. On the First Try

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Surviving the Upside Down meant two things for Will Byers. It meant a second chance at life, and it meant gaining a new friend in Barb Holland.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) References to self-harm and suicide — a family member, not Will or Barb  
> 2) Me doing my absolute best to convey what driving a manual transmission is like  
> 3) Making Will better at it on his first attempt than I was at mine (R.I.P. me, right? Pffft.)  
> 

The first day of Spring Will goes out to Castle Byers and re-reads the Spider-Man comics Jonathan got him for Christmas. The story’s interesting, and there’s a lot of stuff in it, technique-wise, that he feels like he can use in his own art. He loves comparing his stuff to what’s in the panels, but all the times he’s drawn characters out of comic books, he’s always ended up trashing them as soon as he’s done. He’d be beyond mortified if anyone knew how many hours he’s sunken into trying to capture that same attention to detail in Peter Parker’s super suit. That’s why he only ever keeps the drawings of people knows. He doesn’t want anyone to think he’s got in his head that he’ll be a real artist someday.

No matter how cool it sounds and no matter how good Mom say he is, it doesn’t seem like a practical thing to want, living in Hawkins. He knows Jonathan wants to go to NYU someday, and he knows Mom believes in both of them no matter what their dreams are, but Will’s been lowering his expectations his whole life. He knows by now what’s safe to hope for and what’s not.

That’s why he loves comics and D&D. They let him imagine a world where anything’s possible and people don’t have to be ordinary. Where surviving something bad at least leaves someone with superpowers and the ability to be the hero — not just in their own story, but for other people, too.

Coming back from the dead should’ve been cool. It would’ve been cool, if his life was a comic book. Instead he’s Zombie Boy.

“Will?” someone calls out.

He looks out from under the flap of the fort and waves at Barb before getting to his feet and stepping outside. She’s dressed for the cold, bundled up in a jacket with a blue beanie pulled down over her ears. Snow crunches under her feet.

“Hey, Barb! What’re you doing here?”

“Looking for you.” She hugs him and pulls back, cuffing his ear gently. Her knuckles are cold but not much worse off than his exposed ears are. “Your mom said I’d find you out here. What’re you doing?”

“Just reading comics.”

“Oh, Spider-Man. Cool.”

Will looks down. He forgot he hadn’t gotten rid of it before coming out to talk to her. He tosses it back into the fort and mumbles, “I got a bunch for Christmas.”

“Me, too. No, really,” she insists with a laugh and a shrug. “My dad’s crazy about the X-Men. I was younger than you when he got me into it.”

It’s not that he thought girls couldn’t like comics, but he’s surprised to find out he has something in common with Barb that isn’t just the time they spent in the Upside Down. He doesn’t like remembering when they were down there, but he likes that they took care of each other. It used to be that Mike was the only other person in Will’s life who was safe the way Mom and Jonathan are safe, but Barb’s up there with them now. He trusts her, and he meant it when he said she was cool. She’s about to get even cooler apparently.

“Who’s your favorite then?”

“Marvel Girl,” she answers, like it should be obvious.

Makes sense. Barb’s kind and caring like Jean Grey is, and with the red hair, they look enough alike that she can probably see herself in the character the way Will sort of can with Peter Parker.

“Who’s yours?” she asks, watching him like she actually cares about his answer.

“Colossus.”

“An artist,” Barb muses knowingly. She turns in the direction of the house and starts walking when he does. “I might’ve guessed.”

“He’s strong,” he counters, smiling and beginning to relax. “But he only fights when he needs to.”

“To protect people. Marvel Girl’s the same way.”

“Until the Dark Phoenix storyline.”

“Oh, that was so sad. I understand why they took her there: absolute power and everything. Still, I don’t know, I wish she didn’t have to die to come back from it.”

“Nobody in comics stays dead anyway,” Will says, then hums thoughtfully. “Except Spider-Man’s uncle.”

Barb snorts and Will has to laugh, too. It is sort of ridiculous, the things that sound normal in comic books. But that’s how it has to be, for the impossible stuff to come across as believable. He’s curious about her opinion on Marvel Girl’s death, though. Less in terms of the character, and more for the way it was written. He talks comics with the party, and he could recite everyone’s breakdowns and critiques by heart, especially Dustin’s, but Barb’s bound to see something in it that they haven’t.

“It’s supposed to be noble from a storytelling standpoint, isn’t it? The heroic sacrifice?”

“Yeah, and it is, but thinking that it’s the _only thing_ feels… reductive? She chose death so she wouldn’t hurt anyone else, and not wanting to hurt people is good, _of_ _course_ _it is_ , but I never want to believe the best thing someone can do is die. Especially if that’s meant to stand in for an actual redemption arc. Show me _that_ , you know? Show me the character putting in an effort to be better. Death doesn’t change the person who dies. It doesn’t make them grow. Only life can do that.”

The house comes into view then, and Will mulls over what she’s said. He feels a similar kind of way. They did almost die — both of them — and there wasn’t anything poetic about it.

“I guess that’s taking it all really seriously,” she adds, flashing a nervous smile his way.

He stammers but manages to say, “No, you’re right. It’s like, it’s a big deal, but it doesn’t erase whatever came before. It just… stops everything where it was.”

“Sometimes I think that’s worse, don’t you?”

“I don’t know. Yeah. Sometimes.”

She pockets her hands, and he realizes then that they’ve stopped walking. They’ve got another ten feet to go, muddy tracks of footprints leading straight to the backdoor from where they’re standing. Will bounces on his heels.

“Why’d you come over, Barb?”

Her smile gets a little bigger and her shoulders drop down a bit. “To see if you’d want to come out for driving lessons with me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, why not? Your mom says it’s okay, if you feel up for it.”

“I am! She said it was okay?”

“Well, on one condition. You have to be able to see over the dashboard.”

Will deflates a bit. Jonathan tried to take him out to learn last year and they hadn’t been able to leave the driveway for that reason.

“We won’t know till we try,” she reassures him. “Do you wanna try?”

He nods, and they walk inside. Barb stamps her feet a few times just outside the door to get the slush off. Will knocks the sides of his boots against the house and steps in ahead of her.

“I’m making hot chocolate if you want some before you guys head out,” Mom calls from the living room.

Will glances between the towels she’s folding and the pot of water boiling on the stove. Barb crosses the threshold, looking up as she pulls the door shut behind her.

“Do we have time for hot chocolate, Barb?”

“Sure, I’m not in any rush.”

“Mom, do you need help with the towels?”

Will’s shucking his boots before she gets out an answer. By the time he’s draped his jacket over the back of a chair, Mom’s brought over a few stacks for him to put away.

“Take these to the bathroom? Thank you, baby.”

“I can help.”

“Oh, Barb, you’re a guest. I’m not putting you to work.”

“I don’t mind, Joyce. I’d like to help.”

Will ducks into the hallway and doesn’t hear the rest of the conversation. He nudges the linen closet open with his foot and balances the towels between his arm and his chin to push a few rogue hangers out of the way. With most of them tucked away in the closet, he just has to grab a few off the top and hang them up in the bathroom. He drops a washcloth and starts to pick it up when the world jumps like a lightbulb exploding in his head. He spins around, cold all over and alone, panic washing over him in waves.

He squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to see this place again. Doesn’t want it to be real.

_“Will?”_

“Barb?”

“Will.”

Her hands find his shoulders. She’s watching his face and frowning. “Will, what’s wrong? What happened?”

“Nothing,” he says, shuddering, looking down at the towels he dropped.

Barb follows his eyes and gathers them up without a word. She tosses them over his shoulder into the linen closet and steadies him with both hands. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

He gulps around a mouthful of air and nods. He knows he can tell her, whatever it is. She’d understand better than anyone would, and most important of all, he’d _want_ her to understand. He always wants Barb to understand.

“Can I tell you later?”

Barb looks him right in the eye, seems to struggle with an answer, and finally lets go of him. “Okay.”

She stays close by until he manages to get the towels all in their designated places, then they go into the kitchen to have hot chocolate. Mom’s still folding laundry on the couch, but Barb sits with Will at the table while they drink. It’s nice.

“Do you still feel okay to go out?” Barb asks him, keeping her voice pitched low so Mom won’t hear.

“Yeah.”

Will makes quick work of the last of his hot chocolate and takes his mug to the sink. Barb follows him and hands him her mug to be washed. When he passes them back, she dries them and puts them away in the cupboard without needing to be shown where they go. They get back into their boots and coats and head for the door, but Mom catches Will before they leave. She hugs him hard and fits a beanie onto his head as he’s pulling away. He’d meant to put it on before he left for the fort earlier, but he hadn’t been able to find it. It’s still warm from the dryer, so he guesses it had probably been in the wash.

“We’re having pot roast for dinner,” Mom tells Barb, pulling her in for a hug. “You’re more than welcome to stay over.”

“Thanks, Joyce.”

“Jonathan should be home when you get back. He’ll be happy to see you.”

“I’ll be happy to see him, too.” Barb smiles, and it’s real like all the other times she smiles.

“Okay, let’s go!”

Barb laughs and takes him to the door.

“Only if you can see over the dash!” Mom calls out after him.

“I know!” Will yells back, running across the lawn to Barb’s Volkswagen. The door’s unlocked when he tries it, and he leaves it hanging open even after he’s climbed in behind the wheel.

Barb comes over and fiddles with the handles beneath the seat. She glances from him to the windshield, asking, “How’s that? Can you see?”

Will sits up straight and feels around with his feet for the pedals. Excitement swells in his chest. He looks at Barb, beaming. “Yes!”

“Really? Great! Okay, good, hop out. I’m gonna take us over to the high school. You can practice in the parking lot.”

He jumps back out onto the snow and waves. “Mom! I can see over the dash!”

She grins and waves back. “I know! I saw! Have fun, baby! And be careful!”

Barb takes it easy getting them out of the driveway and onto the road. They don’t slide at all, but he can’t tell if that’s because she knows how to drive in snow or if the roads just didn’t freeze last night. He’s never really had to think about it before. It’s all he can think about now, though.

“Jonathan’s gonna be so jealous when he gets home.”

“Oh, no. Should we head back? We can wait for a day when he’s not working.”

“He always has to work.”

Will doesn’t mean to sound so sullen, but there’s no point keeping it from Barb. She misses Jonathan half the time she comes over and she misses Mom the other half, and Will knows he’s the reason they can’t both be working at the same time. That was the rule _before_ the Upside Down. Now he’s not allowed to be home by himself, period. Castle Byers is the only place he can be alone on his own terms anymore.

“They want you to have a good life, him and your mom. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“They love you, Will. They love you so much.”

He turns to look out the window, not liking how her gentle but matter-of-fact tone makes his eyes sting. “I know.”

“It would be nice if he was home more,” she adds. Either she doesn’t notice him avoiding her eyes or she’s giving him space on purpose. “I like Jonathan. He’s a good guy.”

“You don’t — ” Will clamps down on the question.

It’s stupid and none of his business, and he doesn’t know why he thought to ask it at all except…

Except all Mike cares about or wants to talk about anymore is Eleven, and Will knows now why Barb ended up in the Upside Down in the first place. She’s been stranded and left behind just as much as he has, so if anyone could understand what he’s feeling now, it’s her.

“I don’t, what?” she asks, flicking the turn signal and bringing them into the school’s parking lot.

He grimaces around a handful of deflections, unable to think of a single substantial thing to say before she kills the engine. She leaves the keys in the ignition and clicks her seatbelt, obviously not bothered at his inability to come up with an answer, but that only makes him feel worse somehow. He doesn’t want to fool her.

“You don’t… _like_ him, do you?”

She stops and frowns at him. “Who, Jonathan?”

“Well, yeah.”

The corners of her mouth soften and her expression smooths out. The calm and unassuming set to her face is in her eyes, too. Will hasn’t said another word, but he has the distinct feeling she’s listening to him.

“No, Will. Not like that.”

“It’s okay if you do,” he rushes to add.

“Will,” she murmurs. “Where’s this coming from?”

“Just, I don’t know. Nowhere.”

“It doesn’t sound like it’s coming from nowhere.”

“Well, y’know. Steve and Nancy, and Mike.”

_And Mike._

He doesn’t mean to leave it there. It just feels bizarre to be thinking so much about someone he’s never met. He knows he owes a lot to Eleven, and there’s a long list of things he wishes he could say to her, but he just — he wishes he didn’t feel so — and it’s _not her fault_ he feels like this, just like it wouldn’t be Barb’s fault if she liked Jonathan. She deserves to be happy, and so do Mike and Eleven, but does someone else being happy automatically have to mean the one left out will be all alone? Is that what loving another person is supposed to be about? He doesn’t want to get left out if things change again, and lately it feels like that’s all things do is change.

Barb leans back in her seat, watching his face for a few seconds before turning to stare out the front windshield instead. “It’s no fun being the third wheel, huh?”

Something in his chest squeezes. It hurts, but he’s grateful for it, too. Relieved that he doesn’t have to explain it.

Her face when she looks at him again is calm and open still, almost smiling. “Will, can I tell you something?”

“Yeah.”

“You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“I won’t.”

She takes in a slow breath and lets it go just as slowly. “I don’t like boys.”

Will’s stomach flips, but not at all in a bad way. He almost smiles, too. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I like you and Jonathan, and Steve’s not bad. But it’s not the same for me as it is for Nancy or… a lot of other people, I guess. Do you know what I mean?”

He knows, but saying so out loud feels impossible so he just nods in place of that.

Her almost-smile fades. “I wouldn’t ditch you for anyone, boy or girl. That’s not what friends do.”

“But — but they do.” That tight, clenching feeling starts in his chest again, and it _hurts_.

“They shouldn’t,” and the way she says it is so final that Will doesn’t question it. Barb takes off her glasses and rubs at her eyes, turning away from him to do it. Her voice when she speaks again comes out unsteady. “They shouldn’t, okay? It’s not right.”

This is why he likes Barb so much. She saved him and they escaped together, but she gets him on a level completely removed from anything they went through in the Upside Down. She’s honest in a way he’s never been any good at. He’s better about dropping the all’s-well act when it’s her, but even then, especially if he’s hurting, it doesn’t come easy. How could it when everybody always expects him to be weak? When everybody always wants to protect him or write him off or push him to be someone he’s not? But Barb never looks weak to him, and she doesn’t now either.

“I wouldn’t ditch you either,” he blurts out. “For… for anyone.”

She stops with her hand on the door. He clicks his seatbelt free and bursts out into the cold. Barb’s waiting on the driver’s side with the door open when he gets there, and Will doesn’t watch her dab at the corners of her eyes to get the tears out. He just keeps his hands busy with the zip on his jacket and pulls it down so he’ll have a less restricted range of motion once they start. He climbs back in behind the wheel and talks her through adjusting the seat. She’s a lot taller than him, but the seat doesn’t have to come all the way up to accommodate him. He must’ve grown more than he thought he did since last year.

“There’s the hand brake. The gas is on that side, the brake’s the thinner pedal in the middle, and the clutch is over here on the left. Did Jonathan show you how it works?”

Will tests that pedal with his foot, extending his leg out all the way to push it in. He hums, thinking back. “Clutch goes in when you change gears and when you stop in gear,” he recites, squinting and pressing his lips together as he tries to remember the rest. “Then to start… you ease off it onto the gas? There was a way he phrased it…” He holds his hands up to mime drumming.

Barb’s eyes light up. “Feather the throttle.”

“Yeah!” He pushes the pedals with his feet. “Feather the throttle.”

“Yes! Okay, good. You’re gonna use your right foot for the gas and brake pedals, and keep your left over here so you can reach the clutch. The gearshift’s in an H-pattern. It starts with Reverse in the upper lefthand corner then moves over to first, and from there it zigzags to the right.”

He tries out the gearshift, taking it through the numbers step by step, and hovers over in between third and fourth gear, wobbling the handle the way he’s seen Jonathan do it. “Neutral?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Okay. Can we try now?”

“Yeah, I think you’re ready. Buckle up.”

He gets his seatbelt on and she closes his door. She gets in on other side and fastens her seatbelt, too.

“Your lights are here. Turn signals are just there; up for right and down for left. Hands at ten and two.”

She holds her hands up, and Will mirrors her, grabbing onto the wheel as he does. There’s a lot to keep track of, but Jonathan walked him through most of it last year. A lot of what he learned before carries over even though their cars aren’t identical in make or model. He shifts back into neutral and turns the key with his foot on the clutch. When the engine turns over, he switches into first, releases the clutch, and gets his other foot on the brake pedal. He lifts the hand brake and eases his foot over onto the gas, trying to feel where the clutch is gonna give. Once he finds it, they get rolling easily enough.

“On the first try! Good job!”

Will keeps them in first and listens to the engine. He brings the car around a turn carefully, minding the snow. He glances over at Barb, half laughing because she is, too.

“Gosh, I wish I had a camera,” she muses.

“Jonathan might make you take his if we do this again.”

“He’s gonna bring you himself when he hears how you wouldn’t stop grinning the whole time.”

Will laughs, pops the clutch, and changes into second. Driving’s fun. He was nervous at first because he wasn’t sure how much of it would come back to him, but it’s like riding a bike, as easy as remembering how to blend his crayons or the watercolors Barb gave him. It’s just feeling out where everything is and when the shift wants to happen, going up or down in gear as they speed up or slow down. On the third loop around the parking lot, Will picks a space and practices pulling into it. Barb watches him but lets him figure it out. He does okay except for braking too hard right at the end. It’s not a bad attempt otherwise. He pulls the hand brake and opens his door to check where the line is.

“That’s harder than it looks.”

“Do you wanna try backing into that one?”

Will pulls the door shut and twists around in his seat. She’s pointing to the spot directly behind them, so it shouldn’t be that hard.

“I’ll try it.”

He pushes the hand brake back down and presses on the clutch while he shifts up into reverse. With his foot moving over to the gas pedal, he’s focusing on not jerking the car into motion too quickly and forgets all about the steering.

“Keep it steady.”

“What?”

“Straighten out. Pull the wheel this way, just a little.”

Will does what she tells him, and the tires bump the concrete space marker — not hard, but Will still slams his foot belatedly on the brake and makes a startled sound in the back of his throat. “Sorry!”

Barb smothers a laugh with her hand, takes a second to try to make her face serious, and reassures him. “It’s okay. You’ll get the hang of it.”

“Can we drive around some more?”

“Do you want to?”

“Yeah, I don’t like this part.”

“It just takes practice. Wait till you learn how to parallel park.”

Will’s seen Mom do it a bunch of times and she always makes it look so easy, but there’s no way he’s up for trying it now. He pulls out into the lot and circles back around in neat, careful loops. There isn’t really anywhere to go in the parking lot that warrants bringing the car up to third gear, but he wants to at least try it. He guns the engine and makes out all right but stalls somewhere in the process of shifting back down.

“Shoot.”

“No, that’s my mistake. There’s not enough space up here. We could try the backroads by Heathrow. No one’s ever up there.”

“Right now?”

“Sure, if you want to keep going.”

“I do!”

Will pulls the handbrake and unbuckles his seatbelt. He trades places with Barb and zips up his jacket while she’s moving the seat back. She drives out of the parking lot and onto the main roads. Will doesn’t mean to watch her hands or try to see what her feet are doing, but she’s a really good driver. He’s definitely gonna pester Jonathan about taking him in the LTD next time he’s off work.

“Hey, about before?”

“Hmm? Oh.” Will folds his hands in his lap.

“I won’t push if you’re not ready to talk, but I just I want you to know that I’m here, okay?”

He fidgets in his seat, unsure of where to even begin. Knowing that she really wouldn’t push him if he didn’t want to get into it right now makes him want to tell her everything.

“I don’t mind talking about it. It’s kind of confusing, but I think I’ve been… back. _Back_ , back. To the Upside Down.”

Her hands squeeze the steering wheel. She keeps her eyes on the road and breathes, in, out, in again. “How do you mean?”

“Like suddenly I feel different, and when I look up I’m there again.”

“Is that what you saw when you were putting the towels away?”

“Yeah, I was home, but it wasn’t home. It was like when we were there, and everything was cold and dark.”

“Not like you were dreaming,” she clarifies, glancing over at him with serious eyes. “Like you were really there.”

“Yeah, have you…?”

“No,” she says, like an apology. “You said sometimes. Has it happened before?”

“The first time was on Christmas, but I thought I was just imagining it.”

“Did you tell your mom?”

He bites his lip, not wanting to answer, but that’s an answer all on its own.

“Will, I think you need to tell her. What if it’s serious?”

Heat floods his face, blood rushing in his ears. “I don’t — I’m already too much of a burden on them.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is,” he insists. “They plan _everything_ around me. They work all the time, to support _me_. Even before I went missing, that’s the way it was. Things are just worse now. I can’t be sick on top of everything else.”

He doesn’t know how Barb can do this without shaking apart afterwards. In the silence that follows, he genuinely wonders if she can hear his heart pounding even over the engine and the tires and the road beneath them, but he can’t make himself turn away from the window to check. He feels frozen where he is, staring sightlessly at his reflection over the rolling scenery.

“I promise they don’t see it that way, and they don’t blame you for any of it.”

He risks glancing over at her. She’s still watching the road, but that soft, careful expression is back. He shifts in his seat to face the windshield instead of the window.

“I do.”

“Why?”

“ _Because_.”

She pulls over on the side of the road. Her eyes are kind and so is her voice even though he was almost yelling a little while ago. “It’s okay to need help, Will. Do you think they’ll regret being there for you further down the line, or do you think they’ll be glad they did all that they could to keep you with them?”

He swallows hard and wrings his hands. He doesn’t want to need help. He doesn’t want to be any more different than he already is.

“My aunt Wendy was the same way growing up. I guess she was sick a lot. Sick like… well, my dad says she needed medicine for it.”

“What happened to her?”

“She had to be hospitalized because she tried to hurt herself.”

“Was she okay?”

Barb doesn’t say anything. She just stares at her hands on the steering wheel, and Will knows that’s an answer, too. She closes her eyes. After a few seconds she says, “My dad doesn’t like to talk about it and maybe I shouldn’t either, I don’t know, but _not talking_ _about it_ was part of the problem in the first place, and now it’s too late.”

He was wondering earlier where she learned how to come right out and say whatever she’s feeling, but he doesn’t wonder anymore.

“I’m sorry.”

She turns toward him, eyes ringed in red. “Your mom wants you just the way you are, Will. Jonathan, too. That means meeting you where you are, even if you’re sick. _Especially_ if you’re sick.”

Will thinks back to Christmas lights and an alphabet painted in black like a treasure map. He thinks about Mom’s face being the first thing he saw when he woke up in the Upside Down. She’s never given him any reason to think she wouldn’t go to any lengths necessary to meet him, no matter how far from home he wound up. He scrubs at his eyes and doesn’t look up from his lap. It’s not really enough this time to make the shaking-apart feeling go away.

Barb gets out of the car and comes around to his side. He looks up at her when the door opens, and he’s trying to stop, but he can’t. She crouches next to him without a word and catches him when he falls out of the seat into her arms.

“You don’t have to be so strong all the time.”

He doesn’t think she hears what she’s saying, though, because she’s always strong. Maybe not in a way that’s easy to identify, but she is, and he feels like he’s learning how to be strong like that, too.

“Thanks, Barb.”

“For what?” she laughs, squeezing him the way Mom does when she hugs him like this.

For running right to him in the Upside Down and never leaving his side. For coming out of it with him. For being here with him now. For letting him see her. For trying to see him, too.

“For meeting me.”

She laughs softly. “You’re stuck with me, Will Byers.”

He likes the sound of that. He squeezes back and says, “Good.”

After another few moments pass like this, she lets him go. She’s smiling again. “Do you still want to drive, or do you want to head back?”

“I wanna drive. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, of course. Just make sure you check the road before you get in.”

Will looks both ways and crosses back to the driver’s side. He moves the seat up himself, having learned where the switches are by watching Barb do it.

“You got it?”

“Yeah!” He pushes the seat to make sure it’s locked in place and climbs in. “Ready?”

Barb nods, clicking her seatbelt into place. Will turns the key and gets the car going again. The road’s long and straight, and the Cabrio really _goes_ when he tries it. He brings them up to fifth, engine thundering, and Barb whoops, laughing. He eases back down into third and hangs out there, satisfied for the time being. With everyone else out of town for Break, he’s grateful he got to come out here and spend time with Barb. Reading comics in Castle Byers all week would’ve been okay, but it wouldn’t have been fun like today’s been fun.

“Are you staying for dinner?”

“I think so. Why?”

“I want to tell Mom and Jonathan about what I’ve been seeing, and I think it’ll be easier if you’re there.”

She smiles. “Then I wouldn’t miss it.”

He rolls the window down and brings them back up into fifth gear so that they’re flying down the road. The wind ruffles his hair and cools his face. He can’t remember the last time he felt this free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh you look cute today. No really did you change your hair? BANGS?? YOU LEGEND! <3
> 
> Also guys, please, if I can get mega-serious for a second, I know there's a lot of references to/outright depictions of these characters dealing with darkness and pain, but my ultimate goal in writing this story is to demonstrate arcs of healing and recovery and growth, so please, please, my loves, please, if you're struggling and thinking about hurting yourself, please talk to someone. You're beautiful.
> 
> https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org
> 
> National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
> 
> Additionally, some of Barb's talking points here take inspiration from Rev. Chris Lee responding to Billie Eilish's music video for When the Party's Over (around 3:37) and I should say, as someone who's not religious/spiritual in the slightest, his words comfort me deeply. Maybe they'll comfort you, too. <3  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMcuu8mLQ0s&t=437s


	5. Don’t Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy doesn't know what it is about summertime. Bad luck, maybe. Two years in a row? Definitely bad luck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short chapter and a brutal one, so please proceed with caution:  
> 1) The aftermath of violence, referenced physical assault and abuse (a la Neil Hargrove), and injuries consistent with a grown man pummeling a 17-year-old kid.  
> 2) If hospitals/hospitalization makes you squeamish, it might be a tough read.  
> 3) Take care of yourselves, please.

Blinding.

Bright lights and nausea turning his stomach. Pain, inescapable, pulsing in time with his heartbeat and shimmering through the base of his skull. His ear. Something burning inside his ear. A dial tone in his head cranked up to eleven.

His face hurts. His ribs hurt. The hurt in his ear pulls at his jaw, huge and blank and grating like a fucking root canal.

He tries to remember what happened. Parts of it are missing.

Sporadic darkness and shocks of impact sparking into pins and needles. Unnatural emptiness. A void of sensation. His dad’s eyes, a different kind of empty, cold. Hateful. Hurting more than his hands ever have, and how can that be possible? After all this time, how can it still be true?

How did he get here?

Parts of it are gone, destroyed, and the concept of destruction brings him to the answer. To Gene.

Is there any limit to how many times he’ll have to revisit what this feels like? Wasn’t it enough that he lost Mom? He loved her. He’ll always love her, but she’s gone. Now Gene’s gone, too.

What did he think? That they’d get away with it? That he’d get to keep the one thing that felt real?

Every time the world comes apart around him he’s left alone at the end of it. Nothing he can keep or hold. No one to keep him or hold him. It’s all just blinding and sudden, brief agony and lingering, radiating pain.

There’s someone in the room with him. Someone’s hand clasping his. A small hand. Max’s hand.

She’s there, but he can’t see her. He can only feel the moment she notices him squirming to get away from the light. Her hand in his is the only thing he trusts. It’s the only thing in this haze that feels real, and then she’s pulling away, retreating from him, probably afraid of his temper. Always his fucking temper. It’s far away from him now. As unreachable as the stars in the sky.

His eyes clear. He flexes his fingers. Clumsy, slow to move. Painkillers? Was it that bad?

“Billy?” Her eyes are wide and worried and very blue, searching his face for a response he can’t give. She’s sitting in a chair next to where he’s laid up, knees drawn up to her chest and swimming in her dad’s deck jacket. Against the faded green, her unwashed hair looks dingy, a flame seen through smudged glass or a codeine cloud. Her voice ricochets in his head, an underwater kind of sound. _“Billy?”_

He wonders what he looks like that she’s so scared of him. If he’s monstrous the way he feels, the way his dad’s always treated him. The distant blaring pain in his temples and in his mouth — horns? A forked tongue? He screws his eyes shut against tears, realizing those are monstrous, too. His dad’s eyes. His own eyes.

She jumps to her feet, and says, cottony, “Billy, are you… I’ll call the nurse… Okay? It’s okay.”

 _“No, Max,”_ he moans, pitiful and weeping. A broken thing. It’s not okay. He doesn’t want the nurse. He doesn’t want anyone looking at him. It’s too much. He can’t. “Please, no.”

“Okay, I won’t,” she stammers out, a fearful edge of hysteria creeping into her voice. It makes her louder than the shrill siren blaring in his left ear. “I’m sorry, Billy. Billy, what about — what about my dad? Can I get my dad? Billy? Can you hear me? _Billy, I’m here._ Billy, don’t go…”

He tries to stay for her, but he’s tired. He’s so tired, and he doesn’t know how that can be when he only just woke up. Something to do with the IV, maybe. Hard to say, but he floats away, carried off by her tears. The silence closes around him like the ocean’s hand, and he loses her to it. Not that Max was ever his to begin with. She’s not anyone’s. Not like he used to be Mom’s. Not like he wanted to be Gene’s.

No one’s ever gonna love him like that. No one’s ever gonna want him to be free the way she’s free, and he hates her for it. Hates her for that freedom she’s never had to earn, even though it’s not her fault and it never could be her fault. He doesn’t wish this pain or this fear on her, and he doesn’t blame her for his shame or his regret or his anger. He never could. Why would he, when he can carry it? When he should carry it? When it’s his fault it exists in the first place?

He hopes she never knows the pain of having her wings clipped. Even if he doesn’t have the first clue what flying feels like, it has to be better than this sinking, and he doesn’t want her to lose it. Not if he can burn enough for the both of them. Not if she can be free in his place.

 _No one’s ever gonna love me like that_ , he thinks. How could anyone?

He falls asleep.


	6. Take No Shit, Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her last week in California Max tries to understand why they have to move in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said I'd warn for stuff in the end notes, but more and more I'm afraid people won't check them if they're not here, so let's go.
> 
> Warnings for:  
> 1) Slurs and homophobia  
> 2) References to violence & abuse  
> 3) Mentions of drug addiction  
> 4) Violence and abuse just off-screen

The move’s on Friday, and it’s bullshit. Max doesn’t want to go. She’s made it clear just about a hundred times to anyone who will listen that it’s not fair and that they can’t make her, but Mom doesn’t budge. She says Max can make new friends in Indiana and that kids transfer in the middle of the semester all the time. That’s easy for her to say. She’s had plenty of time to forget how rough middle school is. For Max, that’s not even the worst of it. She’s not worried about making friends or starting over somewhere new.

She just doesn’t want to leave her dad behind. Mom tries to soften it by telling her that Dad can call or write if he really wants to, and the way she says it makes it sounds like she doesn’t think he will.

Max can put up with a lot from people. She sort of thinks she gets that from her mom, actually, but to talk badly about Dad when he’s done nothing but love her her whole life always just stops her in her tracks.

Her dad’s not a bad guy. He’s not the _problem,_ and no matter what Neil Hargrove says when he thinks Max can’t hear, he’s not a loser. Not in any kind of way except for the stupid custody battle, and that’s only because it happened at a bad time for him. He’s worked his ass off to get out of that dark place he was in, and she’s so proud of how far he’s come. She just wishes she wasn’t the only one who could see it.

Mom wants what’s best for her. She always has, and in a way, she knows that’s why she stuck with Neil and tried to make it work in the first place. Dad was having a bad time of it, and she wanted a sense of stability. She wanted Max to have a dad, and _she does_. It just took him a while to fix himself, and he couldn’t do that and be a parent at the same time. Max doesn’t hold that against him.

He’s better now, and he’s trying his best, but the same kind of way Dad’s grown as a person because of the separation, Mom sort of went the other way. It’s not that she’s any less kind or that she’s cruel, but something about her used to be bigger, like her heart used to be open and now it’s bolted shut.

This fresh start with this new family is supposed to mend everything about them that’s broken, but Max doesn’t want to be “fixed” by their terms. She doesn’t want Neil’s heavy silences or his heavier frowns, and she doesn’t want to be there the next time he brings out the other kind of heavy that he is. She wishes she could talk to Billy about it. She wishes there’d been a moment at the hospital before he shut everyone out that he could’ve _said_ something to _someone_. Something real. Anything.

She held out hope for a long time that he might change his mind and make the decision to trust her, but he didn’t. And yeah, maybe — _maybe_ — a part of her believes that he might still, someday, but she’s not stupid enough to try her luck with him in the meantime. He was never fun to be around in the first place, but he’s meaner now, ever since he had to go to the hospital.

At least before it happened she could sometimes pretend to be in on the joke when he ran his mouth off about Neil in the car, but now he doesn’t even bother with the nasty commentary. Now he just sulks and glares or slams things. Now he’s _angry_ in a way he didn’t used to be.

Nobody will tell her the whole truth of what happened the day Billy ended up in the hospital with a goose egg on his cheek and two broken ribs. She just knows Neil’s official story is that it was probably _that drifter’s_ fault, and he even tried to put it on her dad once, which made about as much sense as saying Gene had done it. Gene who’s probably the only person in the world less given to violent outbursts than her dad. Gene who once spent an hour luring a raccoon out of the trash and into a humane trap. Gene who’d done the same thing with a black widow they found on the porch because he didn’t want to kill it.

Somehow she was supposed to believe he put Billy in the hospital. That guy. That goofy idiot who waved cheese at a raccoon and drove an hour so it wouldn’t be near a highway when he released it. That actual soft-hearted dork who whispered _cariño mio_ to an ugly spider that would’ve bitten him given half the chance.

Gene used to be all right in her book, but she thinks a lot less of him for how he up and vanished after the whole thing with Neil went down. She figures it freaked him out that the cops got involved, but he should’ve been there. _Max_ was there. _Her dad_ was there.

All Gene had to do was show up, just once, and maybe it all would’ve turned out differently. That’s what friends are _supposed_ to do, and even more than just the beating he took, she thinks the real reason Billy’s all twisted up now is that Gene wasn’t there for him. And it pisses her off like nothing else because if he’d been there, Billy might’ve felt brave enough to tell the truth that day. Max hadn’t known what she was yelling at him to be honest about then, but she knows now.

The reason he turns to stone anytime his dad’s involved and the reason his glare cracked open and his face went white with fear when she called him a liar are the same. _They’re the same_ , and Mom can stick her head in the sand all she wants, but Max isn’t stupid.

She knows why Neil tried to blame Gene for the bruises on Billy’s face, she knows why Billy comes to the table with a busted lip and clean knuckles, and she knows what it means every time Neil scrapes his chair back from the table to follow Billy down the hall into his room if he’s just slammed the door. She knows why his is the only one in the house that doesn’t lock because _it used to_ lock _._

Stomping down the hallway and slamming the door behind him used to be Billy’s thing back when he could count on the door to lock, but there’d been a day, just one, when he thought it would and it didn’t. It’s the closest she’s ever been to seeing it happen, and she hopes it’s the closest she ever gets.

Mom doesn’t see it. She’s so determined to make things work with Neil and for it to be the right call that she can’t accept anything but her version of the truth. When she tells Max the move is the best thing for them, she really does believe it. She says it just like that in the middle of putting wrapped dishes into a box and taping the flaps closed.

They’ve had this conversation so many times she doesn’t even look up when Max brings it up.

“It’s the best thing for us, Max. There are too many bad memories here. Don’t you want to start over? We can have a clean slate where we’re going. No more ugly rumors following us around or people whispering about us at the grocery store.”

She rolls her eyes. “Who cares what anyone says.”

“You’re young. Of course that’s how you feel now.”

“That’s always how I’ll feel! Who cares what anyone says!”

“It matters what people think,” Mom explains, probably trying to sound patient, but mostly sounding frustrated. “How are you going to feel the first time someone judges you based on something that has nothing to do with you?”

“I’ll feel like everyone else feels _all the time,_ ” she insists.

“Do not get smart with me.”

“I shouldn’t be smart?”

“Maxine Glenna Mayfield.”

Max crosses her arms over her chest. The full name drop is supposed to be a warning, but she can’t really hear it as anything but encouragement. Gran’s name tucked up right in the middle gives her strength. She would’ve been on Max’s side for this fight, and Max kinda thinks it’s situations like this that make names and where they come from matter.

 _Glenna_ , Dad told her once, when she was a lot smaller and he and Mom were still together. _That’s Ma’s name. Your gran. Can you guess what it means, Maxie?_

She thought maybe it meant a spark or a light, or glowing. Glenna. That’s what it sounded like.

_It means ‘deep valley’. That’s what you are, baby. Everybody else looks down, but you look up, huh? Don’t you? That’s your light, Max. It’s you._

Max keeps her arms crossed over her chest, words rolling around on the tip of her tongue wanting to be said. Maybe Gran’s ghost is watching over them now and lending Max some of her good old-fashioned crotchetiness for strength because if she was a valley like Max, she was a light, too. Like a comet streaking across the sky.

“I don’t care what other people think.”

“Max.”

“Or what they say.”

Mom stares at her and puts down the marker she was using to write ‘DISHES — KITCHEN’ on the box of wrapped plates and bowls. Max thinks about Dad taking Billy to the hospital and about the cut over his eyebrow like someone had hit him, too. She thinks about Gene taking off to save his own skin. Her hands close into fists, furious and deservedly so. She can’t swallow it down this time. _She won’t._

“I don't care, and I don’t get why it _bothers_ you so much. No one gets to decide who we are but us. So what if people talk! People are always gonna talk! _We shouldn’t have to_ _run_ just for that!”

“We are not running,” Mom snaps, kneeling to hold Max by the shoulders. “That’s not what this is.”

“Really? Because that’s what it feels like. It feels like you’re more worried about gossip than things that are real. Like you’re ashamed.”

Mom sighs, and because her back’s to the den, she doesn’t see Billy breeze out of it with a box of VHS tapes tucked under his arm. He doesn’t try to make eye contact, and he doesn’t make a sound on the way to his room. She doesn’t even hear his door open or close at the end of the hall.

Weird. His moods are so hard to predict.

“I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Max doesn’t know how to tell her after everything that she doesn’t want to be told anything. She’s just been trying to get someone to listen to her, and no one will. Not in this house.

“Can I go to Dad’s?”

Mom looks at her, doubt written all over her face. Something in her eyes gives, though, and Max knows before she says so that she’s gonna let her go. “Ask Billy if — ”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll just take my skateboard. He hasn’t even packed his clothes yet,” she lies in a smooth, graceful way her dad’s never really been able to. Another thing she gets from Mom, maybe. “I don’t wanna bug him.”

“Okay. Be back by nine, or we’ll come get you.”

Max runs to her room for her wheels and bolts out the door. It’ll take something like twenty minutes to get to Dad’s house by skateboard, and after that she’ll only have a few hours with him before she has to head back.

She’s been trying really hard not to think about how real it’s about to get, but with the move on Friday, there won’t be many more chances for her to skate twenty minutes and be at his house. The realization forces her to stop about halfway there, eyes all blurry with tears. She folds almost in half, board under one foot, elbows digging into her knees, and hair falling into her face.

It sucks. Everything about this stupid situation and how they got here sucks.

Dad’s standing in the driveway when Max gets there. He’s not alone. She skids to a halt behind his car, almost unable to breathe for a few seconds. Gene sees her staring at him and smiles at first — _always so_ _friendly, always such a_ _nice guy_ — but whatever ugly look she’s giving him wipes it away fast.

“Whoa.”

“Max? What’s wrong?”

“What’s he doing here?” she hisses, heart hammering so fast she almost feels like she’s vibrating with the force of it. She might be shaking, just a little bit. She can’t believe how badly she wants to hit him.

Gene pats down his pockets nervously, saying, “Leaving. I’m leaving.”

“Yeah, go.” She stamps on the end of her skateboard and catches it in her hand. “That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it?”

Gene’s face goes blank with shock and then fills gradually with something horrible and familiar. It’s identical to the look she saw in Billy’s face at the hospital when she called him a liar, and seeing it on Gene when there’s no way he could possibly know Billy made that same face makes her stomach drop and her eyes sting. How could they both be living with that same terror inside them when Gene wasn’t even there for the worst of it?

“Max, maybe give us a minute?”

She looks at her dad and then back at Gene, conflicted, heart still beating far too fast. Her face feels like it’s on fire.

“Max,” he tries again, softer. “It’s okay, babe. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Finally she tears her eyes away from Gene and walks to the door. She doesn’t make it across the grass before he says something.

“I’m sorry. Will you tell him I’m sorry?”

She drops her skateboard and whips around on him, angry again. “Why don’t you tell him yourself? I don’t know if you noticed, but he doesn’t talk to me. He doesn’t talk to anyone! You’re the only one he ever talked to!”

There were people at school who liked Billy for some reason, but as far as she could tell, he didn’t care about any of them. It didn’t matter how much they flocked around his car after the last bell or how loud they cheered from the bleachers for football, basketball, or whatever. Even in a crowd of people shouting his name, Billy was pissed off and alone always.

He only ever saved his weekends for Gene, and Max used to think it made sense. That maybe Billy just didn’t get people his own age and that’s why he paid attention to Gene at all, because he was older and by definition, cooler than everybody else. What a mistake that turned out to be.

That scared look is back on Gene’s face, but instead of staying frozen there it crumples, and in the next moment he’s crying, as red as she must be. “God, I’m so sorry. Please tell him that? Please?”

“Max, go on inside now. Okay? I’ll be right behind you. It’s okay.”

She backs away, on the verge of tears herself and not wanting to give into them. Dad nods at her when she glances up at him, and she crosses the rest of the yard to the door. Gene’s sobbing behind her, not loud, but enough that she hears it when he can’t catch his breath in between gasps. The screen door doesn’t block out any sound, and from the kitchen counter, she can hear that Dad’s talking to Gene but not what he’s saying. She stares down at the curlicue patterns in the tile, vision blurring and clearing and blurring in a loop.

It feels like forever before she hears an engine turn over. Through the window over the sink she sees Gene drive away. Dad’s quiet when he comes in. He stands next to her at the counter, hands braced against it same as hers. When he talks, he’s quiet, too.

“I don’t think you meant that out there.”

She turns around and leans back against the counter, arms squeezed tightly around herself. “Yes, I did.”

“No, I don’t believe that. I know you’re angry, but you’d never hurt anyone on purpose.”

“ _You_ _got hurt._ Billy, too! All Gene had to do was say something! All _either of them_ had to do was _say something! You_ did!”

Dad waits a beat and then hunkers down to sit on the floor with his back to the cabinets, knees propped up and elbows draped in a loose ring around them. Max holds her ground for a minute, if that, before sitting down next to him, hands piled in her lap and one knee bouncing.

Of course she didn’t mean to hurt Gene. She didn’t mean to hurt Billy either, but she doesn’t understand why they wouldn’t speak up. Gene’s always been a huge softy, but Billy? All he does most of the time is talk back and pick fights and _win_ _them_ , grinning all the while. So why wouldn’t he do that now when it matters more than it ever has? She rubs at her eyes, frustrated. _It’s such_ _bullshit_.

“You know, Max, before you could even talk, you knew how to make that face you’re making right now.”

She scrubs harder at the tears in her eyes and brings her knees up to hold onto them.

“Baby, you’re dealing with a lot right now. All these big changes are coming really fast, and I know your mom thinks this move is gonna fix everything, but I just… don’t think that’s true. I’ve seen too much heartache these last few months to think that family’s gonna do anything but carry it with them wherever they go. But that doesn’t have to be you, you hear me?”

“I know…” Max pats her cheek dry and looks straight ahead at nothing. “I didn’t mean to make him cry.”

“Sweetheart, he’s been tangled up in knots over what happened for months now. Nothing you said gave him that bad feeling he came here with. Honestly if him and Billy could just sit down and talk through this, they might walk away friends.”

“Gene would.” She doesn’t add that Billy wouldn’t.

“He’s dealing with a lot, too. Your stepbrother.”

Max looks at him and at the faraway look in his eyes. She knows how hard he fought to reopen the custody case after the thing at the hospital, but between legal fees and his student loans and the mortgage on this house, it was a losing battle, and she knew what he was up against. She knows on paper he’s a washed up vet and former drug addict, occasionally destitute, and Neil Hargrove’s a hard-working father and husband supporting Billy and now a second kid that’s not even his.

It’s not fair how backward and fucking binding life is. Nothing that matters ever counts. Assholes like Neil get away on technicalities just because all the bad things in their lives never got written down, and people like her dad go their whole life trying to atone for their mistakes.

“Dad,” she starts, not knowing how to phrase the question but needing to ask it. Needing to hear the truth from him just once. “That day, before you took Billy to the hospital… did you and Neil fight”

He sighs, but he doesn’t answer and he doesn’t look at her.

“Why? He wouldn’t stop?”

Dad turns to her, frowning. “What did Billy tell you about that?”

“Nothing,” she murmurs, loosening her hold on her knees. “But you did. Just now.”

“ _Jeez, Max_.”

“You don’t get into fights, Dad — or you wouldn’t, not unless it was really important — and Billy’s never gonna tell anyone how it started. I just know Neil’s full of shit because his version doesn’t make any sense. It’s weird, too. You’d think he would be better at telling stories since he makes them up all the time.”

He gives her the same type of look Mom had on her face earlier. On Mom this expression looked more alarmed than pleased, but on Dad there’s pride in it. His eyes light up with it. A laugh tumbles out of him, soft and low, and he says, “You take no shit, baby. I’ll always give you that.”

“I learned from the best.”

“Yeah,” he snorts. “You and your gran. Greatest duo there ever was.”

“I bet she could’ve made Billy talk.”

Dad watches her for a few seconds and then wraps an arm around her. She leans into his shoulder automatically, instantly warmer. He smells like the same cologne Mom always used to buy him, except he must buy it for himself now.

“I’m really sorry about all this, baby. Shouldn’t be something you have to worry about.”

“I’m not worried. It’s just sad, and I don’t get it because even without Gene, you were on Billy’s side the whole time. You always have been, and it’s like he can’t even see it.”

“Why do you think that is, huh?”

“I don’t know,” she mutters, defensive again. She starts to look down at her hands, but then she remembers she’s been looking up all day to try to come across as stronger than she feels.

 _Because his dad hits him,_ she thinks. _Because no one’s ever stood up for him before. Because he thinks it makes him look tough if he never asks for help._

Who in Billy’s life was gonna tell him he could choose whether he looked up or down at life? Neil only talks to Billy to cut him apart, and Mom’s nice enough, but she’s never been more than just thinly polite to Billy. It’s the absolute bare minimum that she could spare, and even that’s more than Billy’s willing to accept from her. Max can’t say she doesn’t get it. Neil’s not her dad, and he never will be. Even if she does hear less from her dad after the move, the only dad she’s ever gonna have is the one holding her now.

Billy doesn’t have anyone like that in his life. The only time she’s ever heard anyone talk about Billy’s mom was one of those private conversations she wasn’t supposed to hear, like the ones they have about her dad.

 _Left because she was selfish,_ Neil had said. _Loved boozing and whoring more than she loved me or that crying boy she gave me._

It’s a cruelty she’s often seen from Billy, a weapon he turns on others and on himself indiscriminately.

So if Billy couldn’t see the life raft her dad was holding out to him, maybe it’s less to do with where he’s looking and more to do with whether he can see at all. Because that’s the other thing about life, isn’t it? It’s not just about looking up. It’s about shining bright enough that the long shadows cast by things like fear and loneliness can’t destroy the fire within.

She hums thoughtfully and says, “Maybe… he’s in the dark, and he can’t find the light.”

Or maybe Billy doesn’t have any light inside of him to speak of. Maybe he’s the exception to the rule.Except that can’t really be true, can it? Gene cares about Billy. He got scared and made a mistake, but he cares. However mad Max is at him, she knows she wasn’t wrong to like him in the first place, and if someone who couldn’t hurt a fly doesn’t think Billy’s all bad, then that has to mean there’s _something_ good in him, doesn’t it? Even just a tiny piece?

“Max,” Dad smiles, that’s usually the way he says her name. His voice gets thick for a moment before it levels off again. “You’re never gonna be lost, you. Not anywhere you go. San Francisco, Hawkins. Doesn’t matter. But you know what? Sometimes that might make it harder for you to understand it when other people aren’t so quick to find their way. You gotta try to be patient, okay? Will you promise me that?”

She nods. It’s not a difficult promise to make, but her temper might make it a hard one to keep. Satisfied, Dad rests his chin on her head. She can feel him thinking.

“Neil and I, we went a round. I’m not proud of it, but I don’t regret it either. I yelled for him to lay off, and he wouldn’t.” He pauses, maybe weighing his words. “I don’t see red, Max. That’s never been me, but… wasn’t right, a grown man beating on his own child like that. He looked like he saw the devil, but he didn’t know it was because the devil had him already.”

Max shivers at the image. She can’t picture Dad charging in and throwing punches. Firstly because that’s not who he is, and secondly because Neil’s scary. She’s not scared of him, but she knows why Billy is and she knows why Gene ran.

“Weren’t you afraid? Neil’s…”

Big. Mean. Wrong in the same way Billy’s wrong because Neil’s the one who mangled him in the first place.

Dad leans back to look at her, keeping his arm around her shoulders. His eyes are calm, but a wrinkle pops up between his eyebrows at the question. He nods uneasily. “Yeah, he’s a bull.”

Tears spring to her eyes but don’t spill over. Not sad tears, not frightened tears. The angry kind. The helpless, furious kind that come up anytime she starts to become aware of how small she is in an enormous, brutal world. “I don’t like to think about you fighting him.”

He pushes his hand through her hair, comforting, safe. “Can’t say as I’d call it a fight. Wasn’t me he was trying to hurt.”

Max has had that thought before, that she’s seen how much Neil hates Billy — how he saves all of it for him and no one else. She doesn’t understand it. Even as shitty as the divorce was and even as much as she doesn’t want to move, her parents have never taken the separation out on her. They’ve never made her feel, either of them, like she wasn’t loved, and they’ve definitely never made her feel hated. Not once, not ever.

She loves both of her parents, and as hard as it is to imagine Billy loving anyone, wouldn’t he at least love his dad, if loving him was an option? Is it possible to love someone that full of hate? But Mom seems to love Neil for some reason, and Billy at least had a friend, up to a point.

“Worst thing about it wasn’t getting hit,” Dad tells her, looking away again. “It was just thinking, that’s it, he killed him. He killed his boy and I watched him do it.”

She swallows, remembering how small Billy looked in his paper gown with a thin blanket covering him. He was so still while he slept that if his every other breath hadn’t been a wheeze she would’ve thought the heart monitor in the room wasn’t tracking his heart at all.

“Max, I… I’m so sorry, baby.”

“Why?” She looks up at him, startled at the sight of tears on his face.

He’s quick to wipe them away, but his eyes are red and she can see his chest shaking with the effort of keeping it from consuming him. She holds onto him, burying her face in his shoulder so they won’t have to watch each other cry.

“All those years you needed me and I was such a mess, baby, and now I finally got things going, but I went and failed you again like it’s all I know how to do.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t.”

At her angriest, sometimes, she still mourns the time they’ve lost and all the time still ahead of them that they’re going to lose, but anger’s never the main thing she’s felt for her dad. Even at his worst, even at his sickest, she’s only ever wanted him to stay, and no matter how the thought might creep in every once in a while that he didn’t do everything in his power to keep her, she’ll always want to forgive him. She’ll always love him most out of everyone.

“Max, listen to me. If he ever puts his hands on you — in any way, okay? If he grabs your wrist and leaves a bruise, if he pushes you, if he raises a hand to you — you get away from him as fast as you can and you call for help. Don’t try to talk to him. Just get to a phone and call 9-1-1.”

Neil’s never so much as raised his voice to her, but there must have been a time like that for Billy, once. A time before. Was there? She wishes she knew.

“I will, Dad.”

“And that goes for Billy, too. God help that boy because I know he won’t let anyone else, but if he ever touches you, Max, you get out of there. You get safe.”

She nods, and Dad nods back. She can tell he’s uncomfortable even though he won’t look at her. Ever since they first met and shook hands through the open window of Billy’s car, he’s always tried to stick up for him. Max doesn’t really get it, but that’s who Dad is, like some kind of wayward patron saint. He tried to be nice to Billy in the beginning because he was Max’s family, and in his mind that made Billy his family, too, but after the thing with Neil, it started to shift into something deeper and more protective.

“He never has,” Max tells him, because it feels like that should count for something. Like it should at least make him feel a little bit better about defending Billy all this time. “He gets mad, but he’s never tried to hurt me.”

Not physically anyway. The yelling’s a different story, but fuck Billy and his temper tantrums. She gives back as good as she gets every time, and that might not be smart, but it’s the only way she can stand it.

Dad sighs and squeezes her shoulder. He wipes the last of his tears away.

“Did you eat yet?” she asks, to take his mind off that panicked, too-small feeling she’s been seeing way too much of lately. “I’m hungry.”

“How about a grilled cheese?”

They stand side by side at the stove throwing everything together and eat at the table with a vase of wilting daisies between them. Afterwards, they play a few games of poker, and Max loses track of time. She’s not expecting it when a car horn goes off outside and breaks her focus. A look out the window over the sink confirms that it’s Billy parked at the curb, headlights on and engine rumbling.

Dad sighs. “Better not keep your mom waiting. Come here, sweetheart.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow if I can. Or the day after.”

“Don’t worry about it, baby. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Billy lays on the horn, and Max grits her teeth. She doesn’t want to be anything like him, but sometimes she wishes she knew how to be cold and merciless the way he is. He makes it look so easy.

She grabs her skateboard on the way to the car. Dad waves from the front step, but Billy doesn’t look at either of them. He just waits for her to get in the car and brings them back out onto the road. Right away she notices he’s not in his usual snappish mood. The fall of his hair hides his eyes, but she can see how loose his hands are.

He almost looks sleepy, but she’s learned by now that Billy doesn’t do sleepy. He does exhausted and wide awake with nothing in between. If he’s dead on his feet, maybe she has a shot at getting him to listen to her.

“Gene said he’s sorry.”

The silence continues for a few streets, and then, “You saw him?”

“He and my dad were outside talking when I got there.”

His hand tightens briefly on the steering wheel. “Did he say anything else?”

“No, he just cried.”

Billy scoffs. “Pussy.”

She stares out the window and doesn’t say anything. Gene ran, but he’s a nice guy and he meant it when he said he was sorry. She doesn’t want to listen to Billy badmouth him. It doesn’t seem fair.

He really does sound genuinely tired, but the doucheyness is starting to creep in at the edges of his voice all the same. “Aww, were you touched, Maxine?”

“Actually, when I saw him, I wanted to hit him with my skateboard.” She’s not especially proud of it, but it’s the truth. Not even out of anger so much as pure frustration. Exactly how she feels about Billy all the time. “I’m the one that told him to leave. That’s why he got so upset.”

Billy’s grip on the wheel falters. Hesitation breaks up his drawl. “Why? Thought you and him were buddies.”

“Because he shouldn’t have left you, and because it looked like he wanted to talk to you.”

“Does it look like I wanna talk to him?”

This time Max doesn’t try to look at Billy. More than the shitty fake humor, she can hear the meanness coming back, too.

“I don’t know, I — ”

“Yeah, Max, _you don’t fucking know._ You don’t know anything!”

Her hands squeeze into fists on either side of her skateboard. “I’m just telling you what I saw.”

Billy’s all tension now, jolted back onto the Wide Awake end of the spectrum. His hair’s still in his eyes, but there’s visible strain shivering in his jaw. In a strange, hollow voice, he repeats her words to him, taking care to enunciate every last syllable. “It looked like he wanted to talk to me.”

“Billy — ”

“Well, Max,” he murmurs, brightening in a glassy, artificial way. “You know best. Who am I to doubt your judgement?”

“Oh, my God, _don’t talk to him then_ if you don’t want to. I just thought you’d wanna know.”

“What do you know about what I want?”

“I know you don’t want to move,” she says, not shouting yet but working up to it. “I know you think it’s bullshit just like I do, and I know you had a chance to stop it, _but_ _you didn’t_. Because you’d _rather be_ _miserable_ than hold your ground. God forbid you ever find anything worth having that you’d _actually_ _fight for!”_

Billy turns on her, slamming on the brakes so that they both jerk forward in their seats. There’s a bruise on his cheek, and even in the dark his eyes are red. “When have _you_ ever had to fight for anything?”

“I fought for you,” she says, wobbly. “Or I _tried to_ , but you wouldn’t let me!”

He stares at her, furious, breathing hard like he’s just run a mile. “I don’t fucking need your help.”

Max tells herself not to cry. She tells herself not to let Billy have that, but she’s angry. _She’s_ _so angry,_ and she hates him. She actually, really fucking hates him, and if that’s what Billy wants, he can have it. He can close the door on her just like he does on everyone.

“What’s wrong, Max? Cat got your tongue?”

“Fuck you, Billy.”

“Yeah,” he mutters. “That’s what I thought.”

As soon as they get to the house, she jumps out of the car and marches across the lawn to the door. The tears are coming full force now, but she doesn’t make a move to wipe them away, not wanting him to see. She’s halfway to opening the door when the screech of tires stops her. She looks over her shoulder, and Billy’s nowhere to be seen.

“Jerk.”

She rubs her face again and lets herself into the house. Mom catches her in the hallway before she can escape to her room, thumbing at a tear Max missed.

“Oh, Max. It’ll get easier, baby, I promise.”

She sniffles and shrugs. Let Mom think whatever she wants. She always does.

“I don’t suppose my son told you where he was going,” Neil says, stepping silently into view.

Max has an idea where Billy might be headed, but she shakes her head no. Sitting in the car with Billy or standing alone on the porch thinking what an asshole he is, she could hate him and have that be the biggest feeling in her heart, but Neil reminds her how shortsighted that kind of anger is. Letting it control her would only make her as twisted up and wrong as he and Billy are. No matter how pissed off she is at Billy, she’s not giving Neil anything. Not now or ever.

No matter how much Billy pushes her to it, she’s not his enemy here. She never was. She can only hope someday that’ll sink in for him.

* * *

The roar of the Camaro’s engine coming up the street is what wakes her. Her eyes snap open in the dark, and she jumps out of bed. She knows Neil waited up for Billy in the kitchen, and Billy must know it, too, because the front door bangs open loud enough that Max flinches. She stands by the door to listen, and right away there’s a crash and yelling, from Neil and Billy both. A muffled bump shakes the walls, then another, and finally silence.

She presses her ear to the door, straining to hear, and when that turns up nothing, she dares to inch it open just a crack.

A loud _slap_ rings out, and then, very clearly, Neil says, “If I find out you were with that faggot again — ”

“Which faggot, Dad?”

The walls rattle. Billy coughs and then laughs, probably flashing that insane grin he’s perfected, the one that fills up his whole face and scrunches his nose. She wonders if there’s blood in his teeth.

“Get up.”

There’s the sound of shuffling, and Max can’t see what’s happening, but Neil’s not yelling anymore. He’s talking, murmuring almost.

“You think this shit’s gonna fly where we’re going? You think there are _parades_ in _Small Town, Indiana?_ Do you?”

Max swallows hard, an intense heat prickling at her eyes. She wants to make him stop, but would Billy even let her if she tried? What would Neil do if someone other than Billy could see him exactly as he is? She can’t get to the phone in the kitchen without both of them spotting her, and there’s no one she can call anyway. Billy won’t talk to cops. He won’t let her dad do it either.

“Nobody there gives a shit what happens to guys like you. Do you understand me? Say it. Say, _Yes, sir. I understand._ ”

“Yes, sir. I understand.”

“Go to your room and stay there. I don’t want to look at you.”

At the sudden sound of heavy footsteps approaching, Max turns the handle and pushes the door closed. She holds her breath until they pass her room and fade out at the end of the hall. The door across the hall opens and closes quietly, and once the coast is clear, she pulls her door open just a sliver, trying to hear where Billy is and what he’s doing.

There’s a long, awful moment of silence, and then she can hear him crying, quietly except for when he can’t catch his breath, just like Gene.

 _Just like Gene,_ she thinks, remembering the ugly word Neil used.

She’s so caught up on that word staining her memory that she doesn’t hear Billy coming up the hall. She only notices him right as he’s stopping outside her room to brace his hand against the door, and she’s not quick enough to push it closed. It swings open beneath his palm, and he stumbles into the doorframe. Max jumps back to avoid the door, but then she’s rooted to the spot, pinned under his blank stare.

His eyes are glazed, face smeared all over with tears. There’s a split in his lip that wasn’t there before. Her mind races and her heart pounds. This close she can smell the liquor on him.

 _I’m sorry,_ rages in her throat like a sob. _Are you okay? What can I do?_

But she’s frozen, and Billy’s listless, barely even seeing her despite the fact that his eyes are locked on hers. He reaches out with the hand not holding him up against the doorframe, and she doesn’t know what he’s doing until his hand finds the edge of the door. Inch by inch he pulls it closed, and Max can’t move or think or stop him.

The second before he disappears behind the door, another line of tears streams down over his cheek. She presses her hands to the door, the latch slides home, and she closes her eyes.

More than she hates Billy, she hates that this has to be his life. Because yeah, he’s a dick, but it’s hard to imagine him being any other way after what she just heard. She feels sorry for him and helpless to do anything about it.

She lies awake the rest of the night watching the ceiling change colors with the morning, her dad’s words repeating over and over in her head.

_You’re never gonna be lost, you. Not anywhere you go. San Francisco, Hawkins. Doesn’t matter. But you know what? Sometimes that might make it harder for you to understand it when other people aren’t so quick to find their way. You gotta try to be patient, okay? Will you promise me that?_

Max listens to the birds starting to sing outside her window and wonders if this is what he meant, and she wonders what it’ll take for Billy to find his way. If he ever will.

Her alarm for school goes off, and she gets out of bed, yawning. It’s going to be a long day.


	7. Pretty Boys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve got ready for the party that night thinking not a whole lot would happen, and that was probably his first mistake. He would go on to make a few more.
> 
> Halloween in Hawkins, 1984.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) Underage drinking and Satan’s celery making a reappearance.  
> 2) Drunk driving. Don't do it, guys.  
> 3) General tomfoolery along the lines of kissing somebody when you're not supposed to be kissing them.  
> 4) And on that note, yes, if you couldn't tell, Harringrove (nothing explicit, but pretty dubious).

> _The glance has been so much abused in love romances that it has finally fallen into disrepute. One hardly dares to say, nowadays, that two beings fell in love because they looked at each other. That is the way people do fall in love, nevertheless, and the only way. The rest is nothing, but the rest comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than these great shocks which two souls convey to each other by the exchange of that spark._
> 
> — Victor Hugo

Part Two: Which Two Souls Convey

So monsters and alternate dimensions and psychic children and government coverups exist. All at the same time, they all exist. This is the gist of what Steve’s had to come to grips with lately. That, and sometimes rather than making a person more cautious, near death experiences just make people crazy because _Barbara Holland is_ _crazy_.

That’s why, instead of going straight to Tina’s party tonight, he’s driving Nancy around the woods looking for her _crazy_ _best friend_. They’re dressed up and everything, so he hopes they make it to the party before everyone’s gone home.

And sure, he also doesn’t want Barb to be in trouble or hurt or anything. Of course.

Barb might’ve been humoring him in the beginning, but she said they were cool that day at the hospital, and he believed her. That’s why he’s got his window rolled down and an ear to the trees. Not just because he wants to get to the party at some point, but because she’s _his_ crazy friend, too. Maybe it’s not fair to think of her as the crazy friend, but this whole bit where she disappears on everyone for hours at a time to wander off into the dark is kind of her thing now. Has been ever since she and Will landed topside fresh out of whatever nightmare they’d been trapped in. Steve doesn’t get it, and he doesn’t pretend to get it. If what happened to her happened to him, he thinks he’d stay clear of these woods just as much as he possibly could.

Hell, he helped bring one of those bastards down and he still doesn’t like being out here after dark. At least he’s got Nancy with him and the bat rolling around in the trunk besides, but even then. _Even then_ , he’d rather be chugging spiked punch and spinning her around to Dexys Midnight Runners or something. She looks so pretty tonight, and he worked really hard getting his hair perfect for the occasion.

“Do you see anything?” he asks, bringing the car smoothly around a bend in the road.

“No.”

“She’s probably fine,” Steve says, meaning it.

“The last time you thought she was _probably fine_ , a monster was after her.”

Steve leans back against the headrest with a _thunk_. He groans, “I said I was _sorry_.”

“Lights!” she says, throwing her door open without waiting for a reply.

He swerves, startled, and slams the brakes, parking messily on the shoulder and running around to get the bat out of the trunk. “Nancy, wait up!”

She leads the way out into the trees, and Steve just tries not to trip over her. It’s too dark to see anything, so the beam of light waving through the foliage is pretty hard to miss, even from a distance.

“Think she’s got company?” Steve asks in a low whisper, when the single beam splits into two.

“What? Shit.” Nancy takes the pistol out of her jacket pocket. “Stay hidden.”

Nancy Wheeler is terrifying. He loves her, but she scares the shit out of him. They creep closer to the lights and hear voices. One of them’s definitely Barb, but the second one is harder to place. It’s a man’s voice. Not her dad, and not anyone Steve recognizes right away, until he does.

“It’s Hop!” he whispers, walking a little faster.

“Steve!”

“Who’s there?” Hop calls out, and if Steve wasn’t sure before, he’s positive now. “Come on out!”

“It’s Steve!” he shouts, noisily pushing through brush and snapping twigs. “It’s Steve Harrington! Don’t shoot!”

“Jesus, kid,” Hop sighs, holstering his weapon. “What’re you doing out here?”

“Looking for Barb. Hey, Barb.”

“Hi, Steve,” she mutters, definitely rolling her eyes at him.

“Nancy’s here, too. Nance, you can come out.”

She’s got a leaf in her hair when she steps out from cover. Steve plucks it loose and touches his own hair next, worried that it might’ve gotten messed up.

“Barb, are you okay?”

“Yes, Nancy, I’m fine,” she answers, clipped and quiet. “I wish you’d stop following me out here.”

“I’m glad _someone’s_ looking out for you,” Hop counters. He plants his hands on his hips. “But I’d feel better if you stopped coming out here, period. Especially on a night like this. You know how many calls we get on Halloween?”

 _“I’m fine,”_ Barb says again. “I’m fine. I don’t need you babysitting me.”

“Who’s babysitting?” Hop asks, bland and deadpan about it. “I got a call about a missing kid. You gonna come back with me, or do I gotta look like an inept bastard to your parents? Again.”

There’s a moment of complete silence. Steve awkwardly inches the bat behind himself, wishing he could disappear. He should’ve just tried to get Nancy to go back to the car with him when he recognized Hop’s voice, except he didn’t and now they’re stuck in a Mexican standoff. At this rate they’re going to miss the party. Worst of all, Steve’s hair is probably ruined. So that’s cool.

Nancy tries to hammer the nail in the coffin. “We can take Barb home, Hop.”

Hop’s shooting her down before Steve can kick up a fuss. “No, I think we need to have a talk, just the two of us. What do you say, Barb? Let me drop you off at your car.”

Even for the spotty moonlight peaking through the trees, Steve can tell Barb’s _pissed._ For a second she even looks ready to raise hell, but she must realize they’re not going to leave her out here no matter what she says because she just deflates right then and there and doesn’t put up a fight.

“Fine, I’ll go with you.”

“Great!” Steve says, still holding the bat behind him.

Hops shines the light in his eyes and then lower. He whistles. “Get outta here before you hurt someone with that, all right, kid?”

Steve chokes back the joke burning on the tip of his tongue and grabs Nancy’s hand. “Yeah, Hop, you got it. Let’s go, Nancy.”

She pulls her hand out of his. “No, Steve.”

“Hop’s gonna take care of it, he just said. We can still make it to the party if we leave now.”

“ _God_ , have you thought about anything but your stupid party all night?”

He makes an indignant sound in the back of his throat. It’s not _his_ stupid party. They made plans to be at Tina’s tonight. Their _costumes_ _match,_ and Nancy promised they’d go straight there as soon as they got eyes on Barb. He’s not an asshole for wanting to stick to the plan or for wanting to have fun on Halloween. He gestures at Barb with the hand not currently holding a viciously modified baseball bat.

“She doesn’t want us to save her. Not me or you or her parents. _Or_ _Hop_ , for that matter.”

“Kid,” Hop says, heavy, like something meaner’s about to follow it.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t make sure she gets home safe,” he rushes to add, looking right at Hop over his flashlight beam. He looks back at Nancy and shrugs, a big sweeping thing that moves through his whole body. “I just don’t understand what I’m doing here.”

Nancy crosses her arms over her chest. Her breath clouds when she opens her mouth, either because the night’s cold or because her tone is. “You don’t?”

“Nancy — ”

“No, I mean, if you don’t know why you’re out here, then you shouldn’t be.”

“That’s not…”

“Go to your party, Steve,” she says, smiling big and not meaning it. “It’s okay.”

Steve’s heart sinks and his throat feels tight like something in his lungs is locking his breath in place. He glances at Barb, not really for help, but more for… he’s not sure how to explain it.

He does want her to be safe. It’s not that he doesn’t. It’s not that some stupid Halloween party is more important to him than whether she’s okay or in danger all over again, but she’s out here because she chose to be, and she doesn’t need a babysitter. Those were her words, not his. He doesn’t want her to think he’s bailing because he doesn’t care, but staying and forcing her to talk to them when maybe she _needs_ to be out here feels like a different kind of not-caring. So he looks to Barb. Not for help, but more to make sure that she gets it.

Nancy will be mad and that sucks, but it’s more important to him now that Barb won’t hate him for walking away. When she looks back at him, though, she doesn’t look pissed. If anything, she looks sorry. That’s almost worse. He sighs and turns to go.

“Night, kid.”

“Night, Hop. Night, Barb.”

“Goodnight, Steve,” Barb calls after him.

Steve doesn’t say anything to Nancy. He’s done enough on that front for one night. She doesn’t say anything to him either, and frankly, he’s not surprised. He trudges back to the car, drops the bat in the trunk, and waits with the windows down for about minute, two, before turning the key in the ignition.

Let Nancy stay out here and try to fix everything. That’s not him. It’s never gonna be. Why force it just to make her happy? It’s not going to be what she wants, not if Steve’s in the way more than he’s helping.

“I’m not the asshole,” he mutters under his breath, one elbow hanging out the window. _“I’m not.”_

He loves Nancy. He loves that she’s tough as nails and doesn’t give up. He loves that that’s genuinely who she is all the time, and he can’t imagine ever asking her to be different. He doesn’t want her to be different. But what’s so wrong about wanting to go to a party with his girlfriend? Who are they hurting if they act like normal kids every once in a while?

“Not an asshole,” he repeats, pulling off the backroads and approaching civilization.

Tina’s house is easy to find since he’s been there before. He parks on the street and walks up the drive with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. Without Nancy there to lend context to his outfit, he just looks like a douchebag wearing sunglasses at night.

As soon as he walks in, he’s hit with Whitesnake blaring on the stereo and the smell of cigarettes and weed. That doesn’t sound half bad to him, after his clumsy exit from the woods. He’s not the big shot he used to be, but people still remember a time when he ran the show. Ought to be enough to score him a little something that hits harder than beer to take the edge off the tightness in his chest.

He makes a beeline for the kitchen to get a drink and stops short. Propped up on the counter like the world’s most hideous party decoration is a seriously dedicated replica of the fucking alien Sigourney Weaver shot into space. It’s pretty goddamn impressive. He almost wonders if it could actually be a real prop from the movie. There’s a bright purple cupcake propped in its hands like one of those trick bowls where a hand pops out as soon as somebody goes to take a piece of candy. Steve goes to grab it, and a second set of teeth shoots out of the alien’s mouth like fucking Pez.

_“AHHHH!”_

The alien starts laughing, sets the cupcake down on the counter, and unclasps a catch somewhere on the side of what is apparently a mask. Tina’s face is red laughing at him. She says, through tears, “Oh, my God, I really got you!”

“ _Tina,_ you jerk! Where the hell did you get that thing?”

“Made it,” she tells him, rubbing her arm across her face. “Pretty cool, right? I’ve been working on it since last year. You’re the tenth person I’ve gotten tonight.”

“God, you’re so weird,” he says, but he’s smiling, too, now. He takes the mask from her when she holds it out to him. Peering down into the dual-wielding jaw he can see even more of the details that went into throwing the thing together. It’s also really goddamn heavy, so he’s kinda gotta hand it to her for her commitment to scaring the shit out of people. “This is awesome. I thought it was a real movie prop at first.”

“Thanks! What are… Steve, did you come to my party without a costume?”

“What? No, I’m the guy in _Risky Business_. Tom Cruise? It made more sense with Nancy.”

“Where’s she at?” Tina peels back the wrapper on the cupcake and eats half of it in one bite, smoothing her black hair away from her forehead while she chews.

“Uh, there was a thing with Barb. She ended up not wanting to come.”

“Too bad,” she says through a mouthful of cupcake.

Steve raises his eyebrows at her, and she points over his shoulder to a tray with one purple and three orange cupcakes remaining. He takes an orange frosted cupcake and hops up onto the counter next to her, the severed alien head resting demurely in his lap like a grotesque hunting trophy.

“Cool party, by the way. Nice turnout.”

“Thanks. I figure, my parents are out of town till Tuesday, and some of the girls on the squad said they’d help clean up after, so as long as nothing winds up broken, I will call it a success.”

He looks around for the other girls on the cheerleading team. The costumes are throwing him off, but he thought he saw Heather Holloway by the fireplace in a beaded dress with a matching feather headband. There’s a pretty blonde girl in a witch’s hat dancing with her, but Steve doesn’t know her name off the top of his head. Who else is on the team? Tina, Heather, Lindy Louder…?

“Are they all here?” he asks, so she might point them out without him having to admit that he doesn’t know a lot of their names.

“They’re around. Heather’s the flapper in red,” Tina says, pointing just like he hoped she would. “Tammy’s the witch, Lindy’s somewhere… oh, she’s Wolverine, right there.”

“Wolverine?”

“Yeah, in yellow with the claws? See her?”

“Oh, like from the comic books or whatever. Yeah.”

“Jill Rutherford was here earlier. She might’ve left already. I don’t remember what everybody else came as.”

“Fair enough. You haven’t been sitting here all night, have you? You should get out there and dance! Drink some, uh… what _is_ that?”

“Fuel, apparently? Believe me, I’ve asked, and that’s the clearest answer I can get out of anyone. You’d have to find Wyatt Fitzgerald and pry it out of him. He’s the one who made it.”

“Think I’d rather just take my chances,” Steve remarks, taking a bite out of the cupcake. “But really, have you danced at all tonight? You’re the prettiest girl here. You can’t just hide under this mask all night!”

“Always such a flirt, Steve Harrington.”

“Oh, come on, that’s not how I meant it. You’d be the second prettiest if Nancy hadn’t bailed on me,” he adds matter-of-factly, over her amused snort. “I just mean that you could probably have your pick of anyone here if you wanted.”

“Present company excluded,” she clarifies, loftily, smirking. There’s that same humorous light in her eyes that came up the first time he asked her out in the seventh grade. It’s the same amused glimmer she always gets.

“Yeah, obviously,” he says, laughing. It’s true he had a crush on her all through middle school and for part of freshman year, but she wasn’t interested, so he ended up caring about her in a different way. He thinks it’s pretty much the same on her side, too. “All I’m saying is, if you ever want help getting a date or meeting somebody, I’m your guy.”

“Noted, but just so you know, I won’t.”

“Why not? You’ve got a whole year to plan your next scary costume.” He holds up the alien mask and moves it like a hand puppet. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

She scoops the mask off his hands and with the use of a switch that must be inside the head piece, toggles the second jaw so it actually does move in time with her words: “All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy.”

“Okay, okay, the costume’s _awesome_. I’m not denying that.”

“You better not. Look, Steve, you’re sweet, and I know you care, but you don’t have to worry about me. If I wanted to date, then I would. That’s what you said, right? I’d have my pick?”

“Well, yeah,” he murmurs, more like a question than answer.

“It’s not some big tragedy to not want to do what everyone else is doing. You know what I mean?”

He does, kind of. All these years he thought maybe he just wasn’t her type, but it’s dawning on him now that she’s never really dated anyone. Could that be a type, too? To not like anyone? Probably, right? Tina’s smart as hell. No way would she be confused about something like that, and he doesn’t think she’d hold herself back if there _was_ anything she wanted. Not like Steve’s made a habit of doing.

More confidently this time, with full conviction that he knows just what she means, he says, “Yeah.”

Maybe he got it right after all because she smiles, all cheek and brown eyes that go on forever. She really is the prettiest girl here tonight. She might even be the prettiest girl in Hawkins, barring his own personal bias.

“Don’t ever change, Steve Harrington.”

He laughs, feeling his face go warm. Just to be funny, he murmurs, “Now who’s flirting?”

“Don’t you start,” she says, pointing at his face. She’s gone back to giving him that look like he has no idea how funny he is, and he has a newfound appreciation for it, actually. “Now shoo. I wanna see if I can get my bodycount to thirteen before the night’s through.”

Steve shoves the rest of the cupcake in his mouth and hops off the counter while she pulls on her alien head. He gets the last purple cupcake from the tray and places it carefully in her terrifying monster hands.

“Thanks, Steve.”

“Good luck!”

He bins the little paper wrapper from the cupcake he ate and pours himself a generous helping of whatever the fuck concoction Fitzgerald threw together. It tastes sharp and bitter going down.

“Vodka?” he says out loud for Tina’s benefit, smacks his lips, and tosses back the rest of it so he can pour a second cup right away.

Out in the living room, he spots some people from Home Ec sprawled out on the couch, Dean Clemons chief among them. He’s wearing a boxy getup with glossy red and white stripes and bright yellow popcorn pieces spilling out around the collar. There’s one giant kernel stuck to the top of his head like a hat, bright red sleeves and shorts tying it all together. Steve actually thinks he looks awesome, if a little stupid. But funny-stupid, not boring-stupid like Steve. He walks over and calls out to him over the music.

Dean jumps up onto his feet, laughing stupidly and wobbling in his top-heavy costume. A glob of whatever he’s drinking sloshes out over his hand onto the carpet. Looks like beer, thankfully, and the carpet’s a dark color, but still, that’s not gonna be fun to clean.

“Dude, careful. The Nomuras are gonna smell that shit for weeks.”

“Oh, yeah, good call.” He sets the cup down on the coffee table. It’s lined with what looks like parchment paper, except it’s bright red. Not in any danger of water rings. Good. Dean holds out a joint. “You want some of this?”

Steve bums a few really deep hits and it feels awesome. Just noise and silliness and freedom. An excuse not to worry.

Because what’s the point in thinking about monsters and alternate dimensions or stressing out over college entrance exams and scholarship applications? If the monsters come, they’ll fight the monsters. If someone goes missing again, they’ll put together a search party. If his personal essays suck, well, getting upset about it isn’t gonna make them read any better, is it? No, so why bother? He takes the joint again when Dean passes it back to him. A new one. The second? Maybe they’ve had more than two.

“Thanks!” Steve beams at him and tosses back the rest of his drink.

“Whoa,” Dean laughs, steadying Steve when he stumbles back in the direction of the kitchen. “You sure about that, buddy? The bathroom’s that way.”

“I got it, Dean. Dean-o, Deanie.” Steve laughs, a high-pitched, goofy thing that sounds like it can’t have come from him. He points at Dean and says, like a revelation, “ _Deanie_.”

“Holy shit, man, has it been that long since you got stoned?” Dean punches his arm and catches Steve when the blow nearly knocks him over. He’s got big hands, Dean does — stronger than Steve would’ve given him credit for. “Hey, hey, for real, Harrington. Do you wanna sit? You’re all fucked up. Where’s Wheeler at?”

“Didn’t wanna come.” He brushes off Dean’s attempts to get him to sit back down. He’s _not_ fucked up. Not yet anyway. “Need a refill.”

“Yeah, all right,” Dean says, smirking. His face has that rubbery look to it that Steve’s sure his own must, and his blue eyes are glazed. “Try not to fall on your ass. King Steve!” he yells, and everybody cheers because why not, apparently.

Steve grins and flips him off. It feels good. He feels good.

He gets another drink from the punch bowl and notes that Tina’s disappeared from her perch. Tricky. He wonders if she’s in the bathroom or if she’s lurking elsewhere to leap out at people. No, she’s probably in the bathroom. She’s too short to pull off a convincing alien standing up. Sitting on the counter for height advantage really gave her an edge.

He ambles outside with Fitzgerald’s janky punch. The cool air makes it easier to breathe. There’s chanting and whistling from around the corner. Steve takes a long drink of the red punch. It’s going down a lot easier now that he can’t taste it. He tracks down the source of the noise and walks in on a keg stand. The guy finishes with a flourish and sprays beer everywhere. Steve should be grossed out that some of it gets on him, but mostly it feels like it’s happening to someone else. People cheer the new keg stand king, and that’s when Steve sees who it is and whose name everyone’s screaming. That’s when he locks eyes with Billy Hargrove.

Everything about him screams West Coast, from his wild sun-bleached curls to the specks of beer and sweat standing out on his face to the golden tint in his skin that starts at the roots of his hair and just _goes_ , down and down and down. He doesn’t look like he belongs in Hawkins, that’s for damn sure, and what the fuck, he’s still just holding Steve’s hazy stare, still just ignoring the people flocked around him, his adoring public. Feels weird to see it from the outside. It doesn’t grate like he thought it might.

Billy finally looks away from him, finally turns his head to look at someone else, at Tommy, and then they’re both making their way over to where Steve’s standing alone like an asshole. He nearly slaps himself trying to get the stupid sunglasses off his face. Doing that gives him an excuse to tear his eyes away from all the skin on display.

“Hey, Steve!” Tommy calls out to him, close enough that he doesn’t need to shout, but making a show of it anyway. “Get a look at our new king.”

“Don’t skip the foreplay, man,” Billy croons, grinning, but the kind that looks more like a smirk than a smile. “Maybe he wants to fight me for it.”

“It’s all yours, Billy,” Steve says, flapping his hand. Unbothered.

Billy bats his eyelashes. He’s obviously had a lot of practice baiting tools like Steve. Simpering — but in a way that says he’ll deck anybody that calls him on it — he says, “Not even gonna make me work for it? What’ll people say?”

“That he’s lost his touch,” Tommy cuts in, bright-eyed. “But people say that anyway. Wheeler’s got your balls in a jar right next to her cold cream, ain’t that right, Steve?”

“I dunno, Tommy, which one’s the cold cream?” Steve asks, deadpan, and takes a drink.

Billy laughs and Tommy’s cheeks color, and Steve didn’t actually expect that to land at all, but he feels an odd kind of pride all the same. It doesn’t last.

“Where is the princess anyway?” Billy muses, eyes glimmering. The harsh cut of his grin reminds Steve of the time he found a stray cat in his yard devouring a pigeon whole. He licks his lips, completing the image. “What’s wrong, Harrington? Trouble in paradise?”

“No, but it’s sweet that you care, man.”

Billy’s expression opens up, showboating still — for who? Tommy? Clearly he’s eating it up, but that’s not saying much — and prowls closer. As tough as he’s playing it, the deliberate roll of his shoulders just gets Steve thinking of those pull-cord toys that waddle backward anytime the string gets caught on something, and it’s just so stupid, this whole dance. He doesn’t care if he’s not on top anymore. He doesn’t care if people think Nancy keeps his balls on her dresser like a pair of earrings. Are people that bored with their plain ordinary lives that they have to go and talk shit on his? Really?

He doesn’t mean to laugh at the meanest looking guy here, but once he starts he can’t stop. This is good news for Billy. It gives him the opening he’s been waiting for to shove Steve into the hedges. When he does, it’s almost polite.

His cup disappears. Punch spills down his wrist and onto the sleeve of his blazer, but the rest goes who knows where. On Billy? That would be hilarious. Steve teeters halfway in the bush and drops the rest of the way onto the ground with Billy standing over him and Tommy peering over his shoulder. Steve blinks up at them, notes Billy’s black leather jacket, and chuckles.

“Hey, we kinda match,” he mumbles, smiling sleepily and dropping his head back while Billy stares down at him. “We both look like douchebags.”

Tommy gasps, and God, that’s even better. Steve stretches out a bit, eyes slipping shut. He wouldn’t mind getting his ass kicked tonight. That cold, tight feeling in his chest hasn’t really gone away, but he’s reasonably certain Billy Hargrove punching his lights out will finish the job.

“Help me pick his ass up,” Billy growls, no more of that fake coy shit he’d been pulling earlier.

“What? Dude, I mean, look at him. He’s tanked.”

“Help me, or get the fuck out of my way.”

“Ooh, Tommy,” Steve coos, laughing. “Guess we know who’s got your balls in a jar, don’t we?”

“Fuck you, Steve!” he says, probably blushing again. Bless.

Steve struggles to sit up while Tommy and Billy scuffle. His hand and his wrist are sticky with punch. He seals his mouth around the meaty part of his thumb and laves it with his tongue, tasting cherry and bits of dust. Before he’s really made any headway licking his hand clean, Billy’s hauling him up by his arms and pinning him to the wall. With the hedges blocking the porch light, all Steve can see is Billy’s silhouette and the shape of his frown.

“Think you’re real funny, don’t you, Harrington?”

“Made you laugh, didn’t I?” Steve murmurs and gives a toasted little giggle.

He reaches out with the thought of pushing Billy off, but all he ends up doing is palming Billy’s shoulder through leather. His hand’s sticky still, and that’s what gets him staring at his knuckles, at how pale his hand looks against Billy’s skin. He flexes his shoulders against the brick, weirdly aware of how the motion rocks him into the crush of Billy’s hand crumping the jacket at his shoulder. Billy lowers his head to look Steve in the eyes, eyebrows raised high. He scoffs and pushes him again, like he’s trying to smear him into the wall.

“Waste of my time,” Billy mutters.

“So kick my ass.”

Drawling, he says, “Y’know, Harrington? I’m starting to think you’re not worth it.”

“Why? ’Cuz no one can see us?” Steve pops back, grinning lazily and looking over Billy’s shoulder like he finds the whole thing cute because yeah, he does think it’s cute. It’s fucking adorable.

“Wanna test that theory, pretty boy?”

“Whoa,” Steve breathes, smiling. “You think I’m pretty?”

Billy’s mouth opens in a huge, crazy grin. “ _Oh,_ you want an ass-kicking? Keep going. We’ll see if anyone thinks you’re pretty when I’m done with you.”

Steve uses the wall at his back to properly shove Billy off and gets shoved harder in turn. His skin pricks up all over at the spark of a fight he’s craving, _finally_. They’re good and hidden away on the side of the house, and the thumping stereo means no one’ll hear them or come to break them up when Billy inevitably beats the shit out of him. Jonathan Byers kicked his ass into the next calendar week and Billy Hargrove’s muscles have muscles, so Steve’s under no illusions about how it’s gonna go down. He’s hoping he’s right, is the only thing.

He thought he’d come here tonight and feel free, but he just feels like a fuck-up. Nancy was right not to come with him tonight. She thinks he’s a coward, and Nancy’s many things — _is_ _going to be_ so many things — but a coward isn’t and never will be one of them. Steve doesn’t think he is either, but he’s not strong like she is. He doesn’t have the first clue how to be strong the way she’s strong. She’s a force of nature, and he’s just some asshole trying not to trip over her feet in the dark. He’s not bitter. He loves her too much for that, but he knows himself and he knows he can’t keep up with her, and that’s almost worse. The resignation. If that makes him weak, then so be it, but on the short list of things that scare him, Billy Hargrove doesn’t rank.

Even slamming into the wooden fence separating the front- and backyard, a wild, ill-advised urge rises in him to make Billy feel like he’s the one with his back up against the wall. Steve can still make out the spark in his eyes. Can still see a muscle in his jaw jump as if he’s holding back. He doesn’t get it.

“C’mon, Billy. Show me what you do to guys like me in California.” Steve laughs and fumbles at Billy’s shoulders, scrabbling for purchase. One of his hands slips beneath Billy’s jacket and over his collar bone.

“Guys like you?” Billy echoes, easing _off_. Like he’s thinking about _stopping_ , the fucker.

Steve wants Billy to hit him so fucking badly. _Wants it_. He wraps an arm around him beneath his jacket, trying to grapple with him _if Billy_ _would_ _just do something —_ if he would bitch Steve out or hit him or sneer — except he turns into a statue, unmovable, solid. Steve thinks of how Billy batted his eyelashes at him earlier and the gleam of his teeth asking for trouble like an altar asks for blood.

 _“Pretty boys,”_ he whispers against Billy’s cheek, ears burning and hands itching.

He doesn’t get an answer in words. Billy just turns his head and sinks his teeth into Steve’s lip. It feels like an accident, like Billy meant for it to hurt, but his mouth is soft and warm. Steve’s heart leaps up into his throat. He claws a messy fist at Billy’s back, skin burning, sweltering, all of him blazing like a bonfire in Steve’s hands. Billy’s teeth click against his, fingers plunging into his hair and pulling at the roots hard enough to hurt and hurting enough to feel good. Billy’s ribcage is a furnace beneath his fingertips, roaring, burning, coaxing, _and_ _what the fuck?_

Billy tears his hand out of Steve’s hair and shoves himself back, their mouths canting toward each other until the very last second. He sounds like he just ran a mile, and so does Steve.

“Fuck,” Billy mutters under his breath and pounds the fence with the edge of his fist. “Fuck! Damn it!”

“Billy?”

He flicks his eyes back to Steve, hunted, and for a moment, Steve doesn’t know what he’s gonna do. He doesn’t have any idea except he’s sure somehow that Billy’s not about to hurt him. As scary as he looks and as much as he probably wants Steve to think he won’t hesitate, Steve already knows better.

Billy doesn’t hit him. He stares at Steve with a face like he just watched someone kill his dog and slams the fence one more time with his fist. Then he turns tail and storms off. Steve rubs a hand over his mouth and blinks after him. What the fuck. He’s caught himself staring at guys before — he caught himself staring at Billy earlier — but this was a whole step and a half above fucking staring, wasn’t it? Shit. _Shit._

He doesn’t know how long he stands there before he realizes he’s gotta get the fuck out of here. His car’s out front. Steve’s sort of a mess right now, but if he can just make it to his car, maybe he can make a break for it and leave without running into Billy again. Steve twists around to get at the latch on the fence and goes sprawling on the ground as soon as it flies open.

Cool. Great. Yeah.

He almost just takes off right then, but the little door in the fence catches his eye and he thinks of Tina’s carpet stinking of beer in the morning. He can fucking lock up after himself. Probably. Except the fence is about as tall as he is, and he can barely reach the latch when it’s closed. The little metal hook flops around between his fingers like some sick joke from the universe. God, he’s such an idiot. He’s sticky and grimy with dirt from eating shit twice in a row, and he just wants to go home and sleep.

“Steve?”

He flinches and whirls around. Stumbles again. Croaks, “Byers?”

“I thought that was you,” Jonathan says, approaches the fence. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to close this,” he mumbles, pointing at the door between them.

Jonathan slips through the gate and balances on his tiptoes to reach the latch from over the top of the fence. It goes in one try, smooth. Steve’s never felt like a bigger asshole in all his life, and that’s saying something.

“How’d you find me?” he mumbles, sliding down against the fence to sit in the dirt.

“An alien told me,” Jonathan says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Right after she nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“She say if she made it to thirteen?”

“Sounded closer to twenty, actually. But she said she saw you come out here.”

Steve nods but doesn’t say anything else.

“Is Nancy with you?”

“No.”

“Are you okay?”

“What?”

“You look like you’re gonna be sick. Have you been drinking, or did you take something?”

Steve shrinks away from Jonathan’s hand helping him up. He thinks about Billy and how he hits harder than beer, but not in the way Steve expected. Since he won’t let himself be hauled up onto his feet, Jonathan sits next to him instead.

“What’re you even doing here, Byers? Doesn’t really seem like your kinda scene. No offense.”

“Thanks,” he muses, flashing a tiny smile that’s light and just a touch something else. “No offense.”

Oh, that’s funny. Steve laughs, and Jonathan’s smile stays put, not mean, teasing, comfortable. He’d deserve it if there was a little meanness there, but who’s he kidding? Jonathan’s not like that. That nauseous feeling picks at him again, but he doesn’t feel ready to get up yet.

“I was supposed to take Will trick-or-treating, but I could tell he wanted to go with his friends, and Nancy invited me, so I thought I’d check it out. She’s okay, isn’t she?”

He has no idea. It’s been a few hours since he saw or heard from her, but between the gun in her pocket and the company she keeps? She’s probably fine. Better than Steve’s disaster ass, falling into tongue kisses with douchebag-looking tough guys like Billy Hargrove, and what the fuck? He remembers how he felt when he thought she was sneaking around with Jonathan, and here he is knowing exactly what Billy’s mouth tastes like. Why did he let this happen? _What the hell is wrong with him?_

“Steve?”

Nancy asked him to be here tonight. Steve can admit that he’d be out of line anyway to stall over something so trivial, but now he really doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Who the fuck does he think he is getting jealous now? What the fuck.

“I gotta get outta here,” he mumbles, struggling to his feet. “This was a mistake. Coming here, everything. I need to go.”

“Steve, just slow down,” Jonathan calls out, chasing after him. He catches Steve under the porch light, grabbing him by the arms to get a better look at him. There’s an edge to his voice when he says, “You’re not driving.”

“I can give him a ride.”

Steve darts his gaze to the left. Not five feet away, Billy’s smoking a cigarette on the front stoop. He drops the roach and grinds it under his heel, smoke rolling slow and easy out his nose and mouth. Jonathan bars an arm across Steve’s chest like he doesn’t trust him not to bolt for his car while he’s dealing with Billy — or shit, like he thinks he’s gonna _protect_ _Steve_ from the big bad bully. Jonathan Byers is too much. Really.

“I don’t think so,” Jonathan tells him, brusque, no-nonsense.

Billy comes back at him like water, fluid and playful. “He doesn’t mind. Isn’t that right, Harrington?”

“Can you even drive?” Steve blurts out, and his voice breaks around the question.

“You think I can’t handle a fucking keg stand?”

“If you’ve been drinking, you shouldn’t drive either,” Jonathan reasons, sounding perfectly sane and decent and altogether more responsible than Steve and Billy combined.

Billy chuckles and hops off of the porch. He takes his time crossing to meet them. “Byers, right? You’re the one with the brother.”

“Yeah.”

“Mmm.” Billy nods, and while he keeps his tone conversational, he doesn’t sound calm the way Jonathan does. “I heard you fucked up Harrington’s face last year. Think you can take me?”

“What? I’m not gonna fight you.”

“Then you’d better let me have him.”

Steve blinks and shuffles out from under Jonathan’s arm. He’s not about to be the reason Jonathan gets jumped at a party.

He holds up his hands and flashes a smile that’s nervous for a reason he doesn’t like, saying, “It’s cool.”

Jonathan leans in and lowers his voice. “Are you sure? This guy looks crazy.”

Billy must be feeling pretty good about Steve agreeing to go with him, though, because he doesn’t freak out or anything.

Steve shrugs. “I’m good. I got it.”

He does feel less wobbly than before, and Billy doesn’t look off-kilter at all, except in the usual way. Jonathan obviously doesn’t like it, but he must see the wisdom in leaving the assholes to fend for themselves because he turns and goes. Steve regrets it immediately, but he’s not about to call Jonathan back, so he just stands under the porch light with Billy and watches him drive away.

Billy whistles. “Didn’t he and Wheeler…?”

“No, Jesus. You believe everything you hear?”

He buries his hands deep in his pockets, watching Steve steadily. “Just the shit that sounds true.”

Steve rolls his eyes. Even with his blazer on, it’s starting to get chilly out. Billy’s not even wearing a shirt. He’s gotta be cold, right? What’s his problem?

“Are you gonna take me home or what?”

“Pretty boy,” Billy breathes, leaning in just enough to make Steve’s palms sweat. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“Fuck you.”

Billy gets out his keys and tosses them up in the air before snatching them mid-fall. He hums but doesn’t say anything, and the back of Steve’s neck burns all the way to the car.

On the road, Billy keeps it right at the speed limit. Steve doesn’t doubt he can drink anyone from school under the table without blinking, but he probably still doesn’t wanna risk getting pulled over. Billy coasts with the windows down and a cassette tape playing at a good volume over the rumble of tires on asphalt. Steve gives him a basic outline of how to get to his house and sinks down in his seat listening to the music while Billy mouths along.

_Loose lips sink ships  
_ _So come aboard for a pleasure trip  
_ _It’s high tide, so let’s ride  
_ _The moon is rising, and so am I_

“You’re in a better mood,” he risks saying.

Billy turns the volume down and looks at Steve with his eyebrows scrunched up in a question.

Steve squints at him. “I said, you’re in a better mood.”

“Didn’t think I was gettin’ dicked down tonight,” he croons, casual, aimless, none of that devastation Steve saw on his face earlier.

“What? We’re not — ”

Billy pins him with a look, eyes smoldering, and Steve jerks away, panicked and hot all over. What the fuck was he thinking getting into the car with Billy after what happened? Does Steve ever use his goddamn brain? Ever?

Cranking the volume right back up, Billy yells, “First time, Harrington? That’s cute.”

Steve keeps his mouth shut, ready to let the clock run out and bolt as soon as his house comes into view. He never has to see or talk to Billy Hargrove ever again after tonight. They’re not friends. They’re not anything. Billy’s just a dickhead Steve keeps making the terrible decision to be alone with, and Steve made the decision. He did it. He’s not shirking responsibility or blaming it on being fucked up, but it’s gone far enough. The twisting in his stomach isn’t from anticipation or curiosity or want. It can’t be, and even if it is, even if he can’t help that, he can help whether he sees it through.

Billy turns onto Steve’s street and parks smoothly next to the curb. The music cuts out, and then it’s just the two of them sitting in silence looking up at an empty house. Steve meant to cut and run right away, but he hasn’t so much as twitched to open the door. It’s not that he’s thinking of going through with this — _he knows he’s not_ — but he still finds himself thinking about it, and he doesn’t know why.

While he’s staring out at all the dark windows of his house looking back at him, Billy’s hand eases over his thigh in a perfect, confident slide of heat and friction. Steve about jumps out of his skin.

“I’m not gonna tell anyone, Harrington.”

“What?” he asks, and his voice barely comes out at all. He stares down at the backs of Billy’s knuckles like he’s never seen a hand before.

When Steve can stand to face him, Billy looks sincere. More than Steve thought was possible for that face and those eyes and the bitchy smart mouth they come with. He gives Steve’s leg a firm squeeze, and a bolt of heat sparks through him.

“I’m not gonna tell anyone,” Billy repeats, leaning in nice and slow and giving Steve plenty of time to escape. He gets close enough to bump Steve’s nose with his, but he doesn’t kiss him, even though Steve’s on fire wishing he’d do it. “Want to?” he asks, hot and heavy but so soft, too. Gentle.

Steve feels like he’s melting right from the core of himself. He wants to let go and give in so badly, wants Billy’s hands and his mouth and the rest of him, too, but he can’t. They can’t. Billy kisses the corner of his mouth and then the edge of his jaw. Steve breathes in hard and twists away from Billy’s lips ghosting against his neck. He’s breathing hard again, and Billy’s barely breathing at all.

“No, don’t,” he whispers, getting out from under the hand that’s burning him. “Don’t.”

“Get outta my car then,” Billy says, sweetly, wistfully, leaning back to give Steve a Venus flytrap kinda look, honeyed and inviting and one wrong move from a mistake he won’t be able to take back. Wryly, he says, “What’s the line you’re chewing, pretty boy? You want to, but you got a girl, so you can’t? But you don’t want that to be the answer? Really is your first rodeo, isn’t it?” Billy laughs derisively, tongue sticking on a sharp incisor. “Lemme see if I can explain it to you in a way you’ll understand. Sneakin’ around’s kinda the point. You got a girl? I might have one tomorrow and a different one next week. Big deal.”

“But don’t you ever just wanna be with one person?” Steve asks him because of course that’s the part that’s not making sense to him.

Billy furrows his eyebrows at Steve like he’s waiting for a second part to his answer, and something about how earnest his confusion is makes him look — in a word, in a way — innocent. A second later that expression clears and he laughs, a hollow sound. Bitter. The genuine ease Steve had seen thawing Billy’s crazy mask vanishes.

“Shit, Harrington, you might be onto something. Why _don’t I_ find myself a nice guy to settle down with? Wear his jacket, take him to prom? What’s the worst that could happen?” He laughs suddenly, and it doesn’t sound right. It’s too loud. Jagged. His voice, too. It has the same forced brightness as that crazy laugh of his. “ _One person._ Fuck, why didn’t I think of that?”

He drops back into his seat, head tipped back and teeth set against his lip. A tendon in his neck jumps, and this time Steve knows why he’s holding back. This time he knows how much of that coiled up tension isn’t actually violence, for all that it looks like it wants to be. They sit in the quiet for a long time, and Steve knows he has to go, but he doesn’t.

Still wilted against his seat, Billy tells him, “You got a lotta nerve tryna talk about what I want when you don’t even know what the fuck you’re about, Harrington. You want me to make the decision for you? Door’s not locked. It never was.”

“Billy…”

“Get the fuck outta my car,” he mumbles, sounding more tired than anything else.

“But I — ”

His gaze swings over, and his eyes are like flint in the half dark. Not like laughing at all. Some part of him’s gone. He growls, “Get _the fuck_ out of my car.”

Steve scrambles for the handle and throws himself out onto the sidewalk. He barely gets the door shut behind him by the time Billy’s peeling out onto the road again. The Camaro disappears around a corner at the end of the street, radio blaring into the night.

“Shit,” he says, putting his hands on his head and watching the spot where Billy’s car turned out of sight.

He just stands on the lawn for a few minutes, not thinking much of anything, before he crosses the yard to the door and lets himself into the house. It’s dark and empty and perfectly silent, and he’s got no right to feel lonely since it’s his own doing. He walks through the house to the backyard, shrugs off his blazer, and leaves it in a puddle on the ground. The water reflects the moon, and the blue poolside lights shimmer and dance over the concrete and over his hands.

What is he gonna do? He knows he’s gotta tell Nancy what happened. After that, though, he’s got no idea. She might break up with him.

Maybe she should. All Steve’s ever done is make her cry and promise to do better, but this isn’t better.

Steve’s never even let himself consider this scenario, but he knows he fucked up and he’s gonna own it. No lies, no excuses. She deserves that much from him at least, but can he even tell her all of what happened? She wouldn’t repeat it, but it’s not really his secret so much as it is Billy’s, and he promised not to tell, didn’t he?

Fuck.

_Billy._

What does Steve care if he’s decided he can never have the kind of happiness Steve’s always taken for granted? That’s not his responsibility.

But in the car, he’d felt something more than just wanting to kiss Billy and get away with it. Steve doesn’t want to take anything that’s not his, not from Billy or from Nancy. He doesn’t want to _take_. His eyes sting and a deep ache seizes his throat. He screws his eyes shut, wishing, suddenly and viscerally, that he could’ve asked Billy to stay. He knows why he couldn’t. It would’ve been the shittiest decision in a night chock full of bad decisions, but Billy didn’t have to leave thinking the whole world was against him. Not when the truth is that Steve wanted to give him, what? A chance to try on the off-chance that he might take it if he could just pretend it wasn’t his idea?

He can’t be that for two people. He doesn’t know why he’s even thinking it, except —

Except —

The chair by the pool creaks beneath his weight. He watches the light dance off the water. That good heavy sleep he was looking forward to isn’t happening tonight, but that might not be the worst thing. He’s got a lot of thinking to do.


	8. Who’s Gonna Fall For You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve walks away, and Nancy stays. She doesn’t actually let herself think about what that means.
> 
> Halloween in Hawkins, 1984 | Part 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) Mentions of the demogorgon, I guess  
> 2) Referenced homophobia (of the societal kind)  
> 3) I sort of get into a lot of 70s/80s horror films in this story for nostalgia's sake and also to root the characters and events in a time and place, so I apologize profusely if I've inadvertently spoiled any of the classics for you guys. <3

Hop shines the light after Steve as he goes, but Nancy doesn’t bother to watch him go. She’s not mad at him, exactly, but she feels like they keep having this same argument and she’s tired of it.

“Okay, not touching that. Let’s go. I’m back this way.”

Nancy falls into step with Barb, and they follow the swing of Hop’s flashlight in the dark. It’s quiet out tonight, enough so that Nancy hears it when Steve’s engine turns over some many minutes later. She glances over her shoulder in the direction of the rumbling and flails out with her hands when she trips. Barb catches her.

“Got it?”

“Yeah,” Nancy says, but she hangs onto Barb’s elbow anyway. They keep trudging a few more feet, lagging far enough behind Hop to have a bit of privacy. “Does your dad know you took his nightstick?”

“He knows. He was kind of worried at first, but I warmed him up to the idea.”

“Why’d they call Hop then?” Nancy asks, teasing, just a little bit.

Barb sighs, put out. “I left without telling them where I was going. In my defense, I had a good reason.”

“Oh, yeah? Is that what you’re gonna tell your mom? That you had a good reason for scaring ten years off her life?” Hop calls back, sidestepping something in the path. He disappears through the last of the trees and waits for them on the road right where his truck is parked. “Come on and get in. I’ll take you to your car, and then I want both of you going straight home.”

“Sorry you’re missing the party,” Barb says, as she’s pulling open the door to sit behind Hop.

Nancy goes to climb in after her. “I’m not. Scoot over.”

“What am I, your cabbie?” Hop sighs.

Barb and Nancy stare at him in the rearview mirror for a full three-count before he throws his hands in defeat and starts the engine.

“Seatbelts. Look, do we need to have a talk about why you comin’ out here after dark ain’t a sustainable plan? Because at this rate I’m the only one who takes your mom’s calls seriously anymore. God forbid you really do need someone to find you and I’m not around, huh? What happens then, Barb?”

“I was trying to tell you,” Barb starts, just for Hop to cut her off.

“Yeah, yeah, you were tellin’ me your theory about Will’s episodes. I heard you the first time.”

“Can you at least acknowledge that it’s not — ”

“What? That it’s not what? Crazy? It is crazy! You’re wandering around in the dark, alone. That’s crazy.”

 _“Impossible,”_ Barb corrects, glaring, but still pretty mild given how angry Nancy can tell she is. “I know it’s crazy. I was there, remember? I know what we’re up against, but so do you — both of you do — and you can call me crazy all you want, but what you can’t tell me is that what I’m saying is impossible. _Because it’s not_.”

“Say you’re right then,” Hop allows, braking suddenly and turning in his seat to look directly at them. “What can you prove for Will Byers out here that his doctors aren’t gonna find with their tests and their machines?”

Barb wilts, just enough that Hop might not be able to see it. Nancy straightens out as an idea hits her.

“Anything they don’t you want you to see,” she says. “It’s not that big of a stretch, is it? They faked Will’s death and were all too eager to write Barb off as a runaway. What makes you think they’d be forthcoming about anything incriminating this time around?”

“They wouldn’t,” Barb presses, jumping on Nancy’s argument. “They’d bury him before exposing themselves. They already _did_ try to bury him once. Twice, if you count how they left both of us there to die.”

“Do not think for one second that I am advocating for the lab,” Hop intones, pronouncing each syllable with equal parts care and frustration. “But I need you to understand that we do not have the facts or the resources required to pursue this. I need you to understand that any time I take to come out here and track you down is time I could be spending on actual police work. I need you to understand that running into a situation unprepared with no support and no contingency, regardless of whether your heart was in the right place, is stupid. Now — _now having said that —_ ” He pauses when Barb makes like she wants to interrupt, giving her a chance that she doesn’t take. “Now having said that, I will grant that you’re right to be worried, okay? Can you say the same to me, or do we wanna continue arguing over the proper way to handle an investigation into a corrupt government entity?”

Barb crosses her arms but doesn’t look away. She’s always been the type of person to let her reservations be known, but ever since the Upside Down, that part of her’s louder. Fiercer.

“Can you say the same to me?” Hop asks again, softer, all the sharp edges completely smoothed out.

She nods, and Hop looks at Nancy next. She nods, too.

“Good. Thank you,” he says, turning back around to the front. He drives a little ways further and moves the vents around until they can feel the heat on their hands. “Tell me where to go, kid.”

The sight of Barb’s car parked on the side of the road makes a pit of anxiety well up in Nancy’s chest. It was last year, but it feels like yesterday that she stumbled upon the lonely Cabrio, clearly abandoned, and felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. Hop pulls up behind it and puts the truck in park. He looks at them in the mirror and doesn’t take off his seatbelt.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’m gonna follow you home.”

“Fine. Do you want me to drop you off at Tina’s?” Barb asks, unbuckling her seatbelt.

“No, is it okay if I just stay over at yours tonight? My parents won’t mind.”

Barb climbs out and holds the door for Nancy. “Just don’t forget to call them, or your mom’ll freak out. Night, Hop.”

“Night, Hop!”

He sighs. “G’night, girls.”

Nancy jogs around to the passenger’s side and waits for Barb to unlock the door. She messes around with the heat while Barb gets them back onto the road, Hop’s headlights catching in both their mirrors as he makes to tail them.

“Why don’t you want to go to the party?” Barb asks, turning the volume on the radio way down low. “Seemed like Steve was really looking forward to it.”

“Yeah, because he wanted an excuse to check out,” Nancy says, holding her hands up to the vents and rubbing them together. She hates that she’s dressed for twirling around an over-crowded living room and not for the cold like she should be. “I’d just rather be here, and he’d rather be there apparently.”

“That’s not fair, Nance. You told him to go,” she points out, half-laughing, but in that way that sounds kind of exasperated. “If you’d asked him to stay he would’ve stayed.”

“Why? Just because I said so? He can make his own decisions, Barb. I told him to leave because he wanted to leave. It’s not a big deal.”

“Okay, if you say it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal.”

“It’s not. I’m more worried about you.”

“I really didn’t mean to freak you out. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

“It’s okay. I know you’re just worried about Will. Mike mentioned the doctor’s appointments, but I didn’t know it had gotten that much worse with him.”

Barb turns onto a residential street a few blocks away from her house. “You don’t want to stop at your house for clothes or anything?”

“No, that’s okay. Can I borrow pajamas?”

“Yeah, of course.”

They go a few more streets, and Nancy asks, “How’s his family handling it? The episodes, I mean.”

“Well, Joyce is doing her best to keep it together and stay positive. She’s got plenty of support at least. Bob and Hop go to all Will’s appointments with her. Jonathan, too, if he’s not working.”

“Did he look okay the last time you talked to him?”

There’s a beat of silence, and Barb slides a knowing glance Nancy’s way. Feeling very warm all of a sudden, Nancy shrugs.

“I’m just curious!”

“Yeah? Are you?” Barb asks, grinning, and Nancy’s so glad they’ve gotten back to this place where Barb feels okay teasing her about boys. It had taken a really tough conversation and a lot of hard truths shared between them, but anything would’ve been worth this. “You should talk to him then. Joyce would love to have you around anyway. Give her a break from all that testosterone.”

Nancy laughs, still warm but more amused than flustered now. “Is that what you’re doing when you go up to visit?”

“Well, no, lately I’ve just been trading comics with Will. There’s this new Spider-Man storyline where his suit’s black for some reason, and we’ve been coming up with theories about why. Whoever guesses right owes the other a prize of their choice. If I win I’m just going to ask for a painting. He’s getting so good with the watercolors, Nancy. I’ll have to show you.”

“It’s really sweet how close you two have gotten,” she says with her cheek in her hand. “Don’t repeat this, but I think Mike’s actually kind of jealous.”

“Really? Huh.”

“I might be, too. Just a little bit.”

Barb brakes for some kids trick or treating and pulls carefully into the driveway outside her house. She rolls her window down to wave her hand out the window, and Hop keeps driving, hand over the roof of his truck, waving back.

“Don’t be jealous, Nancy,” Barb says cheerfully, giving her a wink. “You were my best friend first.”

They head inside in between two groups of kids, and Nancy calls home from the hallway phone. The doorbell rings a few times while she’s on the phone with her dad, and every time the door swing opens Nancy keeps an eye out for ghostbusters or a little monkey. She doesn’t know which way Mike and his friends would’ve wanted to go first, though, and Mom might’ve already brought Holly down this way by now.

She gets off the phone with Dad and votes for popcorn and scary movies in the living room. The Hollands are mostly stationed in the kitchen waiting to give out candy, so Barb and Nancy are free to watch _Halloween_ where the opening credits are still playing. Even with the doorbell and intermittent shouts of _“trick or treat!”_ it’s a pretty fun time.

“How does she still look so pretty even crying?” Nancy muses out loud, putting back a handful of popcorn and missing her mouth.

“Special lighting? Makeup?” Barb says, considering. “Really good angles?”

“I don’t look that pretty crying.”

“Don’t say that, Nance. You’re always pretty.”

“Aww, Barb.” Nancy flashes a cheeky grin.

“You’re insufferable. Gimme that.”

Nancy surrenders the bowl of popcorn and steals the bag of M&Ms Barb’s been working on. She shakes a few out into her mouth and crunching, adds, matter-of-factly, “I think you’re a pretty cryer. Some people are ugly cryers. Tammy Thompson’s an ugly cryer.”

Barb hums, waving her hand while her mouth’s full of popcorn. She chews a few times, presses her hand to her mouth, hums again, and coughs. “It was one time, Nancy.”

“She was crying about a John Denver song,” Nancy says, and Barb coughs again, trying not to laugh.

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with that time you overhead her calling you a bitch to Carol Perkins, would it? Because I’m pretty sure Carol was the one who started it.”

“No, it’s not about that. Carol’s a pretty cryer, though. On the subject.”

“You’re so weird sometimes, Nancy.” She takes the M&Ms back, taps a few out into her hand, and tosses them into her mouth. “You really think I’m a pretty cryer?”

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t _like it_ when you cry.”

“Of course not. Oh, I love this part. Get him! Yes!”

“Grab the knife!” Nancy shouts, cheering for her right there with Barb. “Stab him!”

Mrs. Holland walks in, worried and confused at their yelling, until she sees Jamie Lee Curtis fighting her way out of the closet. She hangs back a moment to see the wide shot of her attacker laid out on the floor, says, archly, “Well, it serves him right,” and walks right back out, and Nancy can’t help but laugh.

She remembers the first time she saw this movie and how powerful it felt seeing Laurie rescue herself, and even now, it’s right up there with Ellen Ripley flinging the alien out of the airlock into the void. It feels good to see the girl kick ass. It feels even better to see the monster go down.

They finish the movie and head upstairs. Barb gives her a nightdress to change into, and when Nancy’s ready for bed, she comes back into the bedroom to see Barb taking down a picture that was pinned to her vanity mirror. Barb shows it to her, and after taking a second to sort through the amalgamation of colors, Nancy works out exactly what it is. The swirl of orange and green near the bottom is Barb, and extending from her arm is what looks like a spear. On the other side of it, like a tree growing out of a flame, is that thing caught in a roar, the demogorgon.

“Will made this?” she asks, holding it up when Barb hands it to her.

“Yeah, isn’t it great? He’s so talented, Nancy.”

“It’s beautiful. I mean, terrifying, but really beautiful. Are these the same colors you got him?”

“Some of them. Joyce said he’s been back to the crafts store a few times to stock up.”

She hands it back, yearning for something. Maybe just to have been there — for the Upside Down, for the healing process, she doesn’t know. She’d only been half serious when she said she was jealous of Will, but if she’s being honest, she’s a little jealous of Barb, too, for all the time she’s spent becoming a fixture in the Byers’ lives. No matter how happy she is and has always been that Will and Barb had each other when they walked out of hell together, that feeling of missing out persists.

“Do you have any others that he made?”

Barb finishes tucking the painting back into the crevice between mirror and cherrywood paneling. She glances over her shoulder. “Oh, actually, yeah. You want to see them?”

Nancy smiles and sits on the edge of the bed. “Yeah.”

They look through a little sheaf of pieces she’s kept from him. Some of them are more abstract, a few of them look to be studies of flowers or trees, and one of them is a portrait of a girl engulfed in fire. Nancy holds it up next to Barb’s face.

“Why don’t you hang this one up? You look like such a badass!”

“That’s Jean Grey, Nancy,” Barb says, scoffing like _Obviously_.

“That’s the comic you like, right? Jean Grey? M-magic girl. Marvel? Marvel Girl! This is definitely you as Marvel Girl, Barb. Did you ask him about it when he painted it?”

“No, he just said it was Marvel Girl,” she murmurs, looking over it again and tracing the long edge of the page. “Sneaky.”

Nancy snorts and shuffles Will’s artwork back into a single pile. Barb hangs onto the last one and pins it up on the bulletin board next to the window. To look at it she really wouldn’t guess that Will’s only been painting for just under a year.

“You’ve seen the one he made of you, Steve, and Jonathan, haven’t you?”

“Hmm? What?”

“Yeah, last year, around Christmas. They have it hanging up in the kitchen. It’s great.”

“Oh, no, I… haven’t been by to visit.”

Barb hums, a suspiciously conspiratorial sound.

“I can hear the gears turning in your head,” Nancy says, pulling back the blanket and climbing into bed.

“Obviously you like him, Nancy,” Barb points out, turning off the light and getting in on the other side of the bed.

“Well, I like Steve, too, and we’re actually together.”

“Are you? I mean, you’re dating, but is that the same as being together? You said earlier that he wanted to go and you wanted to stay, but is that all the time or just tonight? Because if it’s just tonight, then you’re right, it’s not a big deal.”

“And if it’s all the time?” Nancy asks, frowning at the ceiling.

“Then I’d wonder what you’re doing because it’s not like you to stay in something that’s not working. Look, Nance,” Barb murmurs, twisting over onto her side. “Setting aside however you felt about him before, how do you feel about him now?”

Nancy frowns at the ceiling and turns to face her, too. “Fine? We’re fine. What are you getting at?”

“It’s just that you were kind of hard on him before, and you know me, Nance. I’ll always have your back. I have your back now. All I want is for you to be happy. Are you?”

She hasn’t thought much about being happy. With school and college entrance exams and now the stuff with Will picking up all over again, there hasn’t been time. She’s happy here with Barb, and she’s happy at home helping Holly with her homework and fighting with Mike, but Steve’s… he doesn’t make her _un_ happy. He’s just sort of the routine. Not a rut, right? Never that. Just — constant. Familiar.

“You don’t have to have an answer to that,” Barb murmurs, “and if you don’t want to talk about it, then you can forget I asked.”

“Well, what about you? When are you gonna find someone to go out with?”

Barb snorts gamely at the subject change. “Who did you have in mind?”

“I’ve never heard of Tina Nomura dating anyone. Maybe she likes girls.”

“She’s very pretty, but we don’t talk or have any classes together. Wouldn’t that be kind of weird?”

“I could introduce you!”

Barb shifts onto her back again, contemplative. “I don’t know, I think I’d feel way too conspicuous trying to date now, after everything people said about me when I was gone.”

Nancy doesn’t like that answer. “What about Heather Holloway? She’s sweet. She doesn’t really date either.”

“Are you just going to go through all the girls in our class?”

“It’s not a long list.”

“Nancy,” she laughs.

“It’d go a lot faster if you gave me a name to start with.”

“There’s not anybody right now, _which is fine_. I’ve got more important things to focus on.”

“Like trying to fix my love life?” Nancy teases, propping her cheek up in her hand.

“Yes, exactly like that.” Barb takes her glasses off and sets them on her nightstand. “Which, just so we’re clear, I’m not throwing Steve under the bus here. I like him, more than I used to, in any case. You’re both my friends. I don’t want to see either of you miserable.”

“Mmm, thank you. For a second there I did consider the possibility that you wanted to break us up so you could have me all to yourself.”

Barb swats her with one of the throw pillows from the floor, and Nancy squeals out a laugh.

“Kidding! I’m kidding!”

“You’re such a brat,” she says, but she’s laughing. She lies back down. “I had a crush. _Had,_ Nancy.”

“I know, I just like to tease you. You’ll let me know, though, right? If there’s someone you like and you need help breaking the ice or something? I don’t want to see you miserable either, and it’s stupid that I can date whoever I want but you have to hide for some reason.”

“I’ll keep my eyes peeled,” Barb murmurs, sighing. “You’ll be the first to know if anybody catches my eye, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Goodnight, Nancy.”

“Night, Barb.”

* * *

Walking downstairs in borrowed pajamas and talking with the Hollands about what happened at school over breakfast feels, achingly, like coming home. Not that home doesn’t feel like home, but ever since second grade they’ve had each other, Nancy and Barb. Nancy knows her parents aren’t quite as gracious, but the Hollands have always treated Nancy like it’s a treat anytime they get to see her.

“I can fry up some more, Nance,” Mrs. Holland teases, hiding her smile behind a cup of coffee.

Nancy hums and makes an _oh, no, please_ gesture with her hand to keep from talking with her mouth full. Barb rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling as she translates.

“No, Mom. It tastes better when it’s on someone else’s plate.”

“Just yours,” Nancy says, grinning. She can’t help it. She’s been stealing potatoes off Barb’s plate since they were kids. It’s practically its own kind of comfort food.

The phone in the hallway rings, and Mr. Holland puts down the newspaper he was reading to answer it. Nancy drinks the last of her orange juice and doesn’t know what to expect when Mr. Holland calls her into the hallway.

“It’s for you, Nancy.”

“What? Who is it?”

“Steve Harrington.”

She almost rolls her eyes. She figured he would want to talk about what happened last night, but she’s not ready to get into it with him just yet.

Mr. Holland sees the face she’s making and covers the receiver. “Take a message?”

Nancy presses her lips together, thinking. “Can you tell him I’ll call him when I get home?”

He nods and relays the message, nodding a few times, saying things like, _Uh huh, sure will, thanks, bye now._ After he hangs up, he smiles and says, “If only it was always that easy.”

Nancy shrugs. She’s not worried.

Back at the table, Barb’s helping her mom pick up the dishes. Over her shoulder, she asks, “Was that Steve?”

“Yeah. I’m surprised he’s even up this early.”

“I hope everything’s okay.”

“I’m sure he’s fine. Here, Mrs. Holland. I can get the rest. Thank you for cooking.”

Mr. and Mrs. Holland migrate into the living room to flick on the morning news while Nancy hangs back to help with the dishes.

“He’s probably just hungover,” Nancy mutters, trying to catch a plate when it slips out of her hands into the sink. It dips beneath the gathering waterline and _clunks_ on the bottom. She winces and roots around in the foamy bubbles trying to find it. “Shoot, sorry.”

“It’s okay, but are you sure you don’t want to talk to him? If he called here, it might be important.”

“I’ll call him after we clean up in here, but I’m sure it’s nothing.”

They get everything washed and put away in record time. Nancy dries her hands with a spare dishtowel and wanders into the hallway for the phone. He answers on the second ring.

_“Hello? Nancy, is that you?”_

She frowns. “Yeah, are you okay?”

_“Oh, yeah. Yeah, everything’s… good. Listen, I need to talk to you. Are you at home?”_

“No, I’m at Barb’s still. Do you mind picking me up?”

_“No, that’s fine, I’ll be right there.”_

“Steve? Are you sure you’re okay? Did something happen?” Dread twists nervously in her stomach when he doesn’t answer, and fear makes her ask, “Did you see something? One of those things?”

_“No, Nancy, it’s nothing like that. I just really need to talk to you, so I’m gonna come get you now, okay?”_

“Uh, fine, just — ”

_“I’ll see you in a minute.”_

“Okay — ” She takes the phone away from her ear and stares at it.

Barb leans out into the hallway. “Anything wrong?”

“Maybe? He sounded really weird.”

“Did he say if he’d give you a ride?”

“Yeah, he’s heading over. Um.” She hangs up the phone and blinks. “I’m gonna go get changed.”

“Okay.”

Nancy climbs the stairs and puts on last night’s clothes. She’s grateful Steve picked such normal-looking costumes to wear to the party. It’d be awkward if she had to walk back downstairs looking like a pirate or something. She has enough time to say goodbye to everyone before he shows up ringing the bell. At the sight of him, she hesitates.

“Did you sleep at all last night?”

“Not really.”

“Well… are you sure you’re okay to drive? Maybe you should go home. Get some sleep.”

He flaps his arms and smiles, but not his usual easy smile. This one looks like it hurts. “I can’t.”

Nancy glances over her shoulder and pulls the door shut behind her. “Steve, what’s going on? Just tell me.”

“Can I just… take you home first?”

She lets go of the doorknob and goes with him to his car. “Are your parents okay?”

“What? Oh, last I heard, yeah. I guess. I think they’re in Baltimore right now.”

They climb into the car, and Steve goes to turn the key but stops. Nancy pauses halfway to buckling her seatbelt. His door’s still open, one leg hanging out the door.

“I kissed someone else.”

Nancy stares at him. She moves her seatbelt back over behind the seat. “What?”

“Yeah,” he says, stunned at himself apparently. “At the party.”

“Are you going to tell me who?”

“I can’t.”

She turns to look out the windshield and breathes in slowly. She doesn’t really feel anything yet, but something infuriatingly like tears pricks at her eyes. “You can’t, or you won’t?”

“No, I can’t. It was… and not that you’d _tell_ , but he — ”

_“He?”_

“Oh. Yeah, he.”

“So… so do you… not really _like_ …?”

“Oh! No! No, it’s not — I mean, I do. Yes. I always have?”

Nancy watches him, confused and shocked to silence. He just keeps sitting there with his leg hanging out the door, wilted back against the seat like he knew he had to get as far as telling her, but he didn’t have anything planned beyond that.

“You’re really not going to tell me who it was?”

He closes his eyes. “I’m sorry, Nancy.”

“Are you?” she laughs, but her eyes are stinging again.

“Yes! It was a shitty thing to do!”

“Then why did you do it?”

“Because — I don’t know, I just did. Why does it even matter?”

“Because I’m asking you. I want to know.”

“I didn’t even know I was going to do it! I don’t know why it happened.”

“Bullshit! _That’s_ _bullshit_ , Steve.”

“It’s _all_ just bullshit to you!”

“Well, am I wrong?”

Steve brings his leg into the car and shuts the door, dropping his head back against the seat. He looked rough at the door, but the dark circles under his eyes are a lot more obvious now. He says, “No, you’re not wrong.”

Nancy rubs quickly at her eye, refusing to cry. She’s not going to cry. _She’s not._ “Then _why_ , Steve?”

“Nancy,” he sighs, smiling, but not. His eyes are wet.

“You owe me that much. If you can’t tell me the rest of it, I deserve to know that at least.”

He looks away, wiping at his eyes. “What would it change?”

“Do you _like_ _him?_ Did you do more than kiss him?”

“No!”

“Did you do it to get back at me?”

“What?”

“For not going with you. For staying with Barb.”

“No, I didn’t do it to get back at you,” he says, looking genuinely hurt at the suggestion.

Nancy grabs the door handle and thinks about getting out of the car. She doesn’t even know why she cares, but if there’s something in it that she can understand, maybe they can make sense of it. So she tells him that.

“I just want to understand.”

He presses his fingers to the spot between his eyebrows, but he doesn’t reply right away. She recognizes the little crease at the corner of his mouth. It’s the one he gets when he can’t remember the rule for multiplying fractions or when he wants to use a specific word but can’t think of what it is.

“At first I was just trying to pick a fight. Because that’s what douchebag-looking tough guys _do_ at parties, right? They get into fights _over_ _bullshit_ and kick the shit out of you, they don’t… back you into a corner and kiss you. _Who_ _would think_ — ”

Douchebag-looking tough guy? He doesn’t mean Tommy, does he? It would sort of make sense, but she’s pretty sure Steve’s not friends with Tommy anymore. Could he mean Dean Clemons or Wyatt Fitzgerald? No, not Dean. Steve wouldn’t call him a douchebag, and nobody who actually knows him would ever say he’s a tough guy. Wyatt Fitzgerald? Steve likes him less than he likes Tommy, but if it’s not any of them, then she’s out of suspects, unless — unless it’s —

She gawks at him.

“ — drove me home after, and that was it, I swear to God. What?” he asks, noticing her eyes on him.

“Was it Billy Hargrove?”

All the blood drains from his face. He shakes his head feebly but can’t seem to deny it any other way. She almost wishes she could take it back for how panicked he looks. She didn’t mind making him squirm earlier, but this is different and she knows it. He stammers and runs a hand anxiously through his hair. It has that look like he’s been pulling at it all morning.

Quieter, she says, “Who would I even tell, Steve?”

“ _You_ _wouldn’t._ I know you wouldn’t and it’s not like he’s my friend or anything, but he seemed really paranoid about people finding out. It was kinda sad, Nancy.”

She tries to picture it. Clearly they didn’t fight, and Steve doesn’t seem hurt or skittish at all, with the exception of how desperately he tried to keep Billy’s identity a secret.

“I didn’t think you even knew him.”

“I’ve seen him around. Never actually talked to him until last night.”

“So, you walked up to him and started throwing punches?”

Steve ruffles his hair again. Sounding honestly disappointed, he says, “No, he never actually hit me. We pushed each other around, but that was the worst of it. I didn’t even know it was going to happen, but then it was, and I didn’t push him off.”

“Are you okay?” she asks, watching him.

He kissed back and he’s not trying to say he didn’t, but it also doesn’t sound like he was angling for Billy to spring a kiss on him.

“What? Yeah, it wasn’t — it wasn’t anything — I mean, after, when he took me home, he definitely thought we were… but we didn’t, Nancy. I swear we didn’t.”

“Did you want to?”

He hesitates, winces, and nods. She looks away.

“Nancy, I’m… I know how I acted when I thought — I’m so sorry,” he says, urgent, eyes red-rimmed. “I feel like such a hypocrite.”

“You really never thought about it before?”

“I don’t think about kissing anyone who’s not you.” At her pointed look, he sighs and says, “ _And_ _Heather Locklear,_ but everybody’s thought about kissing Heather Locklear!”

The front door to Barb’s house swings open and Mr. Holland peers out at them. She rolls down her window, blinking the there-and-gone heat from her eyes.

“You kids aren’t having car trouble, are you?”

“No, Mr. Holland. Thanks for asking. We were just going!”

Steve startles when she glances back at him. He waves awkwardly at Mr. Holland and starts the car. He flashes a smile that’s probably meant to be reassuring, but he still looks really tense and uncomfortable. “Am I taking you home?”

She buckles her seatbelt, nodding tightly. He gets them on the road and doesn’t say anything else. She leaves her window down and holds her hand out to catch the breeze as they drive. It’s starting to get easier for her to wrap her head around what happened, but he still looks pretty shaky.

“Was that the only reason, Steve?”

“I don’t know,” he hedges. “I don’t wanna make this about something else, Nancy.”

She tries to catch his eye, but he keeps his gaze fixed on the road. “I’m not asking you to come up with an excuse for why it happened, Steve. I just… if there’s a reason it happened, then we should talk about it.”

Even in profile his smile is strained. “It’s not important.”

“How you feel isn’t important?”

She folds her hands in her lap and wills him to look at her. Steve bites his lip, takes a deep breath, and meets her eyes for a second. He grimaces and looks back out at the road, shaking his head.

“I love you, but that’s all I am is a kid that loves you, and I feel like…”

“What?” she asks, heart in her throat.

“Like it’s real to me, but it’s just Monopoly money to you,” he says, struggling, either because the words are hard to find or because they’re hard to say. He shakes his head again, more viscerally. He rolls down his window. The cold air from outside hits him, and he loosens up just a bit. Ruefully, he adds, “I’m not trying to make a case for why it happened, Nancy, but don’t you ever think… maybe I’m just holding you back? You could be in the middle of saving the world, and I’d be trying to talk you out of it.”

“You were with me the last time the world needed saving.”

He huffs a laugh. “Yeah, and I ran away.”

“You came back. You saved Jonathan. You helped us fight it off.”

“You and Jonathan,” he echoes, in a tone that’s hard to quantify. “Yeah, you and Jonathan.”

“You don’t get to say that to me.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m just saying, we both know I was only there that night to try and fix things with you. I didn’t care about Barb or Will. _They were_ _dying_ , and I didn’t care.”

“We didn’t know that for sure.”

“Well, it didn’t stop you from trying. You were thinking about finding your friend and killing monsters and _saving a kid_ , and all I wanted to do was make up with my girlfriend. Over a fight that _I started_. _I’m_ the one who messed up, _I_ wasn’t there, _I_ smashed Jonathan’s camera, and _I_ said he probably killed his brother, and yeah, you know, I like to think I’m not that guy anymore — ”

“You’re not.”

He sighs and turns onto her street. “I’m better because of you, I know it. But what have I done for you lately, Nancy?”

She’s still trying to think of something to say when he pulls up outside her house. He doesn’t put the car in park. Just stares at the dashboard with the corners of his mouth pinch tight.

“You loved me,” she says.

That has to count for something, doesn’t it? But he closes his eyes and covers them with his hand. She puts her hand on the door but can’t look away from him. She doesn’t know how to tell him she didn’t mean it however he took it.

“Can we talk tomorrow? I think we both have a lot to think about.”

He nods but doesn’t take his hand away from his eyes. She waits, but he doesn’t move or say anything. Her throat aches, making it harder to breathe.

“Steve?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, strained. Like he can’t breathe either.

Nancy climbs out of the car and walks toward the house. She looks back once before reaching the door, but Steve’s already driving away. She sighs and walks into the house.

“Is that you, Nancy?”

“It’s me!” She walks into the kitchen and sees Holly rolling the white of her bread up into a ball. “Hey, monkey.”

Holly beams. “Hi, Nancy.”

“What have I told you about calling her that?”

“Oh, come on, she looks like a monkey. Plus, they’re your favorite, aren’t they?”

She fluffs Holly’s hair up on the top of her head. Between that and the huge lump of bread she’s gnawing on, she really does look like a monkey.

“My favorite are gibbons. They’re apes, _not_ _monkeys_.”

Nancy smiles and fixes Holly’s hair. “That’s right, I forgot.”

She brushes her fingers through Holly’s hair a few more times, catching only a few tangles here and there that come loose as soon as she touches them. Holly looks up at her.

“Did you know gibbons sing to mark their territory? They mate for life, but they can get divorces, too, if they want to. They’re the fastest _manimals_ without wings that can — that live in trees.”

“Mammals, baby,” Mom says, taking her plate to the sink.

“Fastest mammals that swing from trees,” Holly edits, bouncing in her chair. She holds up her hands to demonstrate her next point. “They have a ball and sock joint here, so their wrists are _bi-ask-ial_.” She drops her hands and looks at Mom. “I wanna go to the zoo! When can we go again?”

“ _Oh_ , thank you for that, Nancy.”

Nancy laughs and helps clear the rest of the table.

“Sweetheart, come wash your hands and then you can go play in your room, okay?”

“Okay.”

Mom brings the step stool over to the sink so Holly can wash her hands, and Nancy watches her trot out of the kitchen to the stairs. It’s crazy to think how much bigger she’s already gotten since last year. The big thing she was into then was a tiny tambourine she smuggled home from school. Once the teacher intervened and Holly’s favorite toy got confiscated, Mike made her a tambourine out of paper plates and bells to play whenever she wanted. Holly calmed down with it after about a month, but Nancy can still hear how it jangled and rattled when she played it.

“At least this isn’t like when she fell in love with the tambourine,” Nancy offers.

“Gosh, please don’t remind me. That’s all I need is for her to ask where it went.”

“Where _did_ it go, Mom?”

She hums innocently. “You’d have to ask your father.”

“Uh huh.”

“How was the sleepover? Is Barb doing okay?”

“Oh, yeah, she’s great. Her parents said to tell you hi.”

“That’s so sweet of them. I keep meaning to make it over for coffee one of these days. I’ll have to call Marsha, see if we can’t get something on the calendar. I know I’d go if we just set a date.”

Nancy nods absently. She’s glad Mom is friendly with Barb’s parents. Her dad’s never been what anyone would call outgoing, and the Hollands don’t go out of their way to entertain guests, so that makes Mom the social butterfly of the group. Luckily, it only takes one.

“Was that Steve I saw dropping you off?”

“Hmm? Yeah, he gave me a ride.”

“From Barb’s?” Mom asks, watching Nancy with a knowing, but forgiving look on her face.

Nancy rolls her eyes. “Do you want to call and make sure I was really at Barb’s last night?”

“No, I trust you. I’m just wondering why you had him bring you home. You and Barb didn’t have a falling out, did you?”

“No, Mom.”

“Did you and Steve?”

She doesn’t answer and sets about drying dishes.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Nancy remembers the last time they had a conversation like this about Steve, and how it wasn’t really about Steve so much as it was about Nancy’s guilt over Barb going missing. This time, she’s not sure, maybe it’s still not really about Steve. It doesn’t feel like it is, not all the way.

“We were supposed to go to a Halloween party last night,” Nancy starts.

“You didn’t?”

“He did.”

“Here we go. Come sit, sweetheart.”

Nancy sits on a stool at the kitchen island. “How do you know — ”

“Nancy. I dated boys like Steve Harrington once. I know the type.”

“Well, it’s not _like that_. Nothing… I mean, he told me what happened. Honestly he probably feels worse about it than I do.”

“Why should you feel bad about it?” Mom asks, pointed.

“It’s not that I feel bad, it’s just, last year when Will and Barb were missing and I spent all that time with Jonathan, Steve thought we were seeing each other behind his back. We weren’t even doing anything, but he was devastated, Mom. He said I broke his heart, and just now in the car when he told me what happened, I was mad, but I wasn’t — I’m not upset like he was.”

Mom looks Nancy straight in the face, eyes calm and compassionate but focused and searching, too. “Oh,” she whispers. “You don’t love him.”

Nancy scoffs and looks away, shaking her head. “ _I like him_ , it’s not that I don’t, and he’s sweet. He’s never lied to me about anything. Even with this, he never would’ve even thought to keep it from me.”

Leaning in, Mom says, “Are you happy? Is he?”

“You sound like Barb,” she mutters, averting her eyes.

“Barb’s a smart girl, and she cares about you. What’s going on, Nancy? Is this about more than just the party?”

“He doesn’t think he’s good enough for me.”

“Well, he’s not, if this is how he’s going to act.”

“Mom — ”

“Why don’t you go out with Joyce’s son? He’s such a polite boy, and I could tell he liked you.”

“ _Mom_ , that’s not what we’re talking about.”

“Why not? Nancy, baby, I hear what you’re saying, and I’m sure you care about Steve. It sounds like he cares about you, too, but you kids are so young. You have so much time to make up your mind about what you want, and if you don’t want to be in this relationship, then you don’t have to stay in it.”

Nancy throws up her hands. “So what, I should break up with him?”

“I’m not telling you one way or another. I just don’t want you to feel like you have to settle, here or in any relationship. Compromise is one thing, and that can be good, but you don’t need to sell yourself short, Nancy. Not for anyone, not ever.”

“That’s just it, Mom. I’m… not that I’m defending what he did, but it’s — ”

She thinks about how he said he loved her and how hurt he was that she couldn’t think of anything else he’d given her. But more than that, she thinks about how she didn’t say it back. Steve thinks she’s settling for him, but isn’t the reverse just as true and twice as sad if the best part of him really is worthless in her hands and they both know it?

“Nancy?”

She must be making some kind of face because Mom leans in to rub her back. “You’re right, I don’t love him.”

“Do you think that’ll change?”

She doesn’t know, but she’s not like Steve. She doesn’t fall fast and hard with her whole heart, and that’s not something she’s withheld from him on purpose. They’re just different. They’ve always been different.

“I don’t think so,” Nancy whispers.

“That’s okay.”

“It is?”

“You know how you feel, and you know how he feels. That’s always the hardest part. Now you just have to decide what you’re going to do about it.”

“ _That’s_ not the hardest part?”

Mom smiles. “Nancy, you’ve never had any trouble knowing what’s right.”

Nancy doesn’t want to be comforted by that, but she knows it’s not an empty platitude. She says, “I just don’t want to hurt him.”

“I know you don’t, baby. But if you wait, you might just hurt him later, and I know you don’t want to do that either.”

Nancy shakes her head, blinking back sudden tears. “No.”

Mom steps off her stool to hug Nancy, resting her chin on her head. She rubs her back again. “Baby, it’s okay. You just have to trust yourself, and remember to be kind.”

“Trust myself,” she repeats, frowning, and then, brighter, “Be kind. Okay, yeah, easy. I can do that.”

“I know you can.”

“But… maybe tomorrow. I just need a little more time. I think he does, too.”

“Good idea. Are you gonna be home for dinner?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you feel like coming with me and Holly to do the shopping?”

“What if I stay here and watch Holly? Where’s Dad and Mike anyway?”

“Mike stayed over at Will’s last night, and your father got called into work. On a Saturday, yes, I know. At least it pays time and a half. You’ll stay here with your sister?”

“Sure, I’ll get her to tell me more about gibbons.”

Mom smiles and moves a piece of hair behind Nancy’s ear. “Why don’t you wash up first, and then I’ll run to the store. Do you want anything special? I can pick up that chewing gum you like.”

“That’s okay, Mom. I’m just gonna go upstairs. I’ll let you know when I’m out.”

Nancy takes a shower and brushes her hair out. She wipes a hand across the mirror over the medicine cabinet to look at her reflection. Without the costume and last night’s hair or makeup, she looks more like a version of herself she recognizes. There’s nothing wrong with growing up, but she thinks Steve had it a little bit right last night, too. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a kid for as long as they’re young enough to get away with it.

She’s not as angry at him as she thought she’d be. Knowing what was going on in his head helps a little to soften the blow, though she still finds herself coming back to Billy. The little she knows about him supports Steve’s claim that he thought he’d catch a beating from him, but what must he have looked like to Billy that he thought otherwise? And if he really was as fearful of discovery as Steve says, what was he thinking that he risked going in for the kiss anyway?

She gets dressed and walks to the top of the stairs, running a towel through her hair one more time. “Mom, I’m out!”

Mike pokes his head out of the kitchen. “Why are you yelling?”

“Oh, I didn’t hear you get home. Is Will okay?”

He leans back against the archway that separates the kitchen from the living room. His face is suspicious, and she rolls her eyes at him, ducking into the bathroom to hang up the towel. She ruffles her hair a few times and makes her way down the stairs.

“My best friend and your best friend talk, remember?”

Now he rolls his eyes. “He’s fine. He’s just freaked out.”

“Barb said he has visions of the Upside Down. I’d be freaked out, too.”

Mike trudges into the living room and sits on the couch. He clasps his hands together in his lap, face angled away from her. “You could tell if you were there again? It looks that different?”

Nancy stops at the bottom of the stairs with her hand on the railing. “It’s colder.”

“I don’t like this, Nancy. It doesn’t feel right.”

“Why? You don’t think he’s in trouble, do you?”

“I don’t know. Yes.”

She sits next to him on the couch. “You know Hop and his mom would do anything to help him. They already have.”

“So would I,” he insists, turning to look at her with big, imploring eyes.

“I know. Mike, we all care about Will. If what happened last year happens again, we’ll all be there to stop it.”

“Not all of us.”

“You mean your friend Eleven?”

He looks away. “I know she’s out there somewhere. Sometimes it feels like she’s _right there_ trying to talk to me, but I can’t hear her. What if she’s in the Upside Down like Will, but she’s there all the time?”

“How do you think she’s talking to you?”

“On the radio. There’s this frequency I use to try to reach her, and I think she can hear me or… see me, but she can’t talk.”

“You think she’s in danger?”

“Maybe? I can’t tell. It just feels like she’s ignoring me.”

Nancy remembers Steve covering his eyes in the car, not ready to see her or to be seen. “If she’s not ready, for whatever reason — and maybe that reason isn’t that she’s scared or hurt — then maybe she’ll be ready soon.”

“So I just keep trying anyway? Even though I’m pretty sure she won’t answer no matter what I say?”

“You can’t give up on her if she hasn’t given up on you, Mike. You said it yourself. You don’t know why she hasn’t made contact. Maybe…” she sighs.

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe you should focus on Will for right now. Eleven needs time, but Will is _here_ and you _know_ he’s scared. He needs you, too.”

“I’m not gonna ditch him,” he says, like it should be a given, like he shouldn’t have to say it.

“Good. That would be the last thing I’d want to worry about, if what was happening to him was happening to me. He’s been through enough as it is.”

Mike gets an uncertain look on his face, like he doesn’t like what she’s getting at. Nancy doesn’t want to, but she knows he won’t hear her out unless she gives him something that’s not just a perceived dig at him.

“You know how Barb went missing from Steve’s backyard?”

“Yeah?”

“I had just told her to leave. Because I wanted to be alone with Steve.”

He stares blankly at her for a second, and then grimaces. “ _Gross_ , Nancy.”

She punches his arm. “Are you listening? She went missing because of me. I took her there, and then I left her alone. _I ditched her._ Not because I stopped caring about her, but because I wasn’t there for her when it mattered the most. Because I chose Steve over her.”

“But I’m _not_ choosing El over Will. I just — I wanna know that she’s okay, and I want him to be okay, too, but I _know_ where he is.”

“Not when he’s in the Upside Down.”

“If I could follow him there, I would!”

Nancy watches him jump off the couch and pace. She wishes Mom was home. She’d know what to say to him to calm him down, mostly because she wouldn’t be trying to calm him down. She’d be trying to help him make sense of what he’s feeling, and she’d leave it up to him to decide what to do about it. So Nancy changes tack. She tries to find the torn seam in the fabric that’ll help Mike unravel the issue to find the part of it he can touch and fix and solve.

“Okay, let’s think about what we know. If Will’s been back to the Upside Down, that has to mean Hawkins Lab is up to their old tricks again, right?”

Mike wrings his hands and keeps pacing. “I guess.”

“And if he’s _at least_ having visions of being back there, maybe he’s not doing it on purpose.”

“ _Of course_ he’s not doing it on purpose.”

“You said you get on a certain frequency to talk to Eleven, right? Why?”

“Because she uses the white noise to find people. The douches at the lab taught her how, remember? That’s how we heard Barb and Will on the radio in the gym.”

“She used the radio to communicate, kind of like Will using the lights to talk to his mom?”

“Sort of, but I think El’s the only one who can use the radio like that.”

“Except Joyce and Hop set the lights off,” Nancy tells him. “When they went to find Will and Barb, we were in the house, and we saw them walking down the hall in the Upside Down.”

“Okay? So?”

“So the lights aren’t exclusive like the radio static’s exclusive. Anyone can use it, and if we apply that logic here to Will’s visions of the Upside Down… maybe he’s the light _something else_ is setting off. If something from _there_ is sending out signals to bring Will onto its wavelength, like you and El with the radios or the Upside Down and the Christmas lights, then that would explain why he can’t control the episodes.”

His foot catches on the carpet. He gawks at her. “But El took out the demogorgon last year.”

“How do we know that’s all that was in there?”

Mike shivers and shakes his head. “That’s not a better scenario! That’s worse!”

“But it makes sense! Hawkins Lab is still functional, Mike. That’s where he goes to be examined. They’re probably even encouraging it, just like they did with Eleven. If there’s another monster in there trying to get out, they could’ve just as easily put it there, whether they counted on Will having access to it or not. I’m sure they couldn’t help themselves.”

“Then… then why doesn’t Barb have any visions? Why don’t you or Hop or Mrs. Byers?”

“Barb said she and Will got separated before they were found. Something could’ve happened in between then and when they got out.”

“Will would’ve told me.”

“He might not remember. You heard him on the radio. How far gone he sounded.”

Mike starts pacing again, but slower. He makes a few circuits around the room and then throws his hands in frustration. “ _I hate this!_ We beat this stupid monster already. It doesn’t get a second chance! How can we even do anything if the lab is just gonna screw it all up again?”

“You’re right. We have to shut them down.”

“You would come up with something like that,” he scoffs.

“Do you think I’d suggest it if I thought I couldn’t do it?”

“Shut down _an_ _entire_ _government_ _facility?_ ” He folds his arms over his chest, incredulity written all over his face.

Nancy stands up and mirrors him. “Yeah.”

“Okay, you and what army then, Nancy?”

“Who says I need an army? All I need is a foot in the door and a tape recorder, but since you mention it, I can think of a few people off the top of my head who’d jump at the chance to take those bastards down.”

For a few long seconds he can’t seem to make up his mind how to react, but he settles on dropping his arms at his sides and whispering, “Holy shit, you’re serious.”

“Why wouldn’t I be? This thing hurt everyone last time, and it’s like you said, we beat it once already. I’m not gonna just sit around and let it come back stronger to win the war after we took the battle fair and square. I don’t know yet what the monster looks like this time around, but we know where it came from, and we _can_ do something about that.”

“Jeez… okay, how do we do it?”

“No, no, there’s no _we_ in this. I’m going to do it. Me and Jonathan and Barb.”

“Not Steve? I thought you said he was good in a fight.”

Nancy bites her tongue. She shrugs. “Yeah, in a fight. This would have to be covert.”

“So you’re gonna _take down the lab_ , but I can’t do anything? That’s not fair, Nancy. I knew about all this stuff way before you did.”

“It’s not a contest, Mike. If his condition gets worse, Will’s gonna need you. You can do plenty just by being there for him.”

He slumps, put out, but he doesn’t argue the point with her. The front door opens, and Mom walks in with a cloth bag of groceries slung over her shoulder.

“Oh, Mike? There’s a few more bags in the car. Would you mind bringing them in? Nancy, come help me put these away.”

Mike drags his feet the whole way to the door. Mom watches him go and raises an eyebrow at Nancy. When she just shrugs, Mom sighs, accepts that as an answer, and goes back to unpacking the bag she brought in. Nancy puts the lettuce and carrots in the crisper, then starts going through the second bag when Mike brings the rest of them in. She doesn’t know why Mom ever insists on taking them with her to do the shopping. She can get in and out with everything on her list in a fraction of the time it takes if they’re stopping her every two minutes to ask for something.

“What’s for dinner, Mom?” Mike asks, stocking the pantry up with canned corn and green beans.

“Steak. Your father asked for it.”

Mike frowns. “He’s really working today?”

“He should be home in a few hours. He said he’d call when he was ready for me to go get him. You can come with me to pick him up if you’re that eager to see him.”

“I think I’ll pass,” he mumbles, still in a mood.

Nancy takes the potatoes and onions over to the wooden bin Mom stores them in. Mike’s still shelving cans, so she takes the bag off his hands and holds it open for him. Between the two of them they get everything put away in record time. Mike wanders off to his room with a Twix bar, and Mom tosses something to Nancy out of the last bag. She catches it and turns the square package around in her hands to read the label: _Big League Chew Bubble Gum_. There’s a drawing on it of a girl with a bat and a visor, two lines of black grease under each eye.

“I said you didn’t have to, Mom,” Nancy says, smiling.

Mom pulls another package out of the last bag and tosses it onto the table. She starts folding the cloth bag, raising one shoulder in a shrug. “They were buy one, get one half off.”

Nancy tears a corner off the package and plucks a few stringy pieces of gum out. “Thanks.”

“Sure. Are you feeling any better?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Good, I’m glad.”

Nancy has to pass the time between now and talking to Steve tomorrow, but she figures she can at least call and let him know she’s ready to see him. He sounds better when he answers, and he doesn’t have any hangups about meeting her for breakfast in the morning.

In the meantime, she sits in Holly’s room and helps her build a green and brown forest out of Mike’s old Lego sets. Once Holly deems their creation worthy of gibbons, she gives Nancy a teddy bear to weave in and out of the skinny trees they made. They take turns ‘swinging’ through the forest until Dad gets home. He grills the steaks out in the backyard while Mom fixes up mashed potatoes and green beans. Nancy helps set the table and plate everything up. Mike’s pretty quiet, but he gets talking again when Holly asks Dad about the zoo and he doesn’t say no. Mom and Nancy trade looks while they team up on him. It’s pretty funny watching them go.

* * *

When Steve picks her up in the morning to go to breakfast, she feels calm. He looks nervous but like he slept at least. The place he picked is pretty quiet.

Their waitress brings them menus and asks after Steve’s mom. She calls Mrs. Harrington by her first name, even. Steve smiles at her, strained, and Judith — Nancy reads her name tag — asks if they’re ready to order or if they need a few minutes.

Steve catches Nancy’s eye. “Just coffee, or are you hungry?”

“How are the waffles here?”

“Made from scratch like everything else, sweet pea. Personally I think the French toast is better.”

“I’ll have the French toast then, and a glass of orange juice, please.” Nancy hands her menu back.

“Got it. And you, hun? Biscuits and gravy like always?”

“Sure, Judy.”

“And coffee?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Comin’ right up, babe. Two shakes.”

Steve hands his menu back and rubs his hands together. He glances at Nancy then out the window, starting to get skittish again.

“Do you come here often?”

“That’s my line,” Steve mumbles, raising his eyebrows.

Nancy looks at him. “Judy seems nice.”

He shrugs. “I don’t know, I guess I come in a lot.”

“Sounds like you’re a regular.”

Steve watches his hands, two of his fingers tapping. “Nancy — ”

“One coffee, one O.J. Food’ll be right out.”

“Thank you! What were you saying, Steve?”

“I mean, what’s… what’re we doing here? Are we breaking up?”

Nancy doesn’t answer right away, but something in her face gives away the answer. He blinks, nods, and turns to look out the window. She watches his lips press together and his hand tremble against the table. Nancy gets out of her seat and slides into the booth on his side. She scoots in next to him to hold his hand.

“Steve.”

“It’s okay, Nancy.”

“No, I want to talk to you about why. It’s not what you think.”

He doesn’t look at her, but he does laugh. “It’s not because I’m a dumb jock and I kissed someone else?”

“You’re not a dumb jock.” She glances around and lowers her voice. “And I’m not mad about what happened with Billy. This isn’t about that.”

He wipes at his eyes. “What is it about then?”

She leans her head on his shoulder and waits for him to look at her. “You’re enough. I know you love me, and that’s enough. For… for someone, that’s enough. No, listen. Listen, please, because I haven’t given you what you need either, Steve, and we should talk about that.” Nancy squeezes his hand. Her voice doesn’t come out as strong as she wants. “You deserve someone who’s gonna fall for you the way you fall for them.”

The corner of his mouth twitches into half a sad smile. “And you deserve a badass.”

“Shut up, you are a badass.”

“Not like you, Nancy. Not like you.”

“You said I changed you, right? Well, I think if we try being friends, we’ll do more growing that way. Otherwise I’d just try to make you more like me, and that’s not fair to you. You shouldn’t have to be like anyone but yourself.”

“Guess I like who I am now,” he murmurs.

Nancy smiles at him, meaning it. “I do, too.”

She stays sitting with him even after Judy brings their food and asks about Steve’s mom one more time. When Nancy pokes him about it after she leaves them to their breakfast, he’s more willing to explain.

“My mom’s not much of a cook. She brings me here for breakfast whenever she’s in town. Judy’s been here as long as I can remember.”

“I can tell she loves you,” Nancy teases.

“She basically watched me grow up.”

Nancy spares a thought for Steve’s parents, who she’s only ever seen over the holidays. The rest of the time she doesn’t know what Steve does in his big house all by himself, especially now that he doesn’t have friends over. It doesn’t seem to get to him, though, so she’s never brought it up, and she’s definitely not going to start now.

“Hey, let me try your French toast.”

She nudges her plate closer to his and cuts a piece of gravy-soaked biscuit with her fork while he does the same to her French toast. It’s pretty good. She’s been here for lunch before but never for breakfast. Maybe she can bring Barb next weekend. Thinking about that — and about Steve’s empty house — makes Nancy wonder what he’s going to do now. With Tommy and Carol out of the picture, Barb and Nancy are really the extent of his social circle.

“We’re still gonna be friends, Steve.”

Around a mouthful of French toast, he says, “I figured.”

“And we’re gonna be okay. Not just me, both of us. You can always talk to me.”

Steve takes a long drink and his cup when he sets it down is empty. He taps his fingers on the polished tabletop. His face is calm, and there’s a stillness to him that looks peaceful. He sighs and leans away from her so that he’s pressed up against the window.

Nancy scoots to the side to give him room. She watches him until he looks back out the window. “What is it?”

“Uh, just, y’know. Maybe I can’t.” He shrugs, turning to stare down at their empty plates.

“You can’t what?”

“Talk to you. You said _always,_ Nance, and I mean, yesterday I told you I loved you, and I meant it, y’know? And everything you said about why this isn’t working and how you wanna be friends, I’m right there with you. I want us to be friends, too, and I’m gonna _try_ because I don’t want to lose you, but it might take me a while to change how I feel.”

“Okay. That’s okay.”

“Yeah? Are you sure?”

Nancy smiles at him. “I’m sure.”

Judy comes to clear their plates and get them the check. Steve sends Nancy out ahead while he pays, but even from the door she can see the huge tip he leaves on the table. Nancy waits in the car while he says goodbye to Judy and rummages around in the glove compartment for a cassette to listen to. Steve gets in a minute later when she’s changing out the tapes. The piano starts in time with the engine turning over.

She presses her lips together to hide her smile. “Do you think Billy likes Journey?”

“No,” he says with a scoff. “No, he’s one of those… jeez, what’re they called? Who’s the guy that makes that face on the cover, and he’s got, like, _devil horns?_ ”

Nancy laughs at his description and even more so when he tries to show her the face he means. “No one makes that face, Steve.”

“No, the guy does! What song do they do? _Man_ , the one everyone knows.” He starts humming, and the humming grows into lyrics the more that he finds his way back to the song. His voice carries once really he gets into it. “Don’t need reason, don’t need rhyme… _nah nah-nah nah-nah-nah-nah na-ahh._ Goin’ down, party time. _Bah-duh-duh_ gonna be there, too. _I’m on a highway to hell_ — that song. Who does that song?”

“I don’t know. Steve, you never told me you could sing.”

“Can’t everyone?”

Nancy rolls her eyes. “No one in my family can.”

“Oh, come on. I bet your mom sings. I bet _Mike_ does. All those voices he can do? _Everybody_ sings, Nancy.”

“Not well!”

“ _You_ _do._ You sing all the time when that Bruce Springsteen song comes on the radio. Or uh, who’s the other one you like? Girls just wanna have fun? Cyndi Lauper!”

“You should sing more,” she says to get him back on track. “It sounded really good.”

“Well, I keep telling you. Anyone can do it.”

“You haven’t heard my mom try to carry a Barbra Streisand tune.”

“That’s mean, Nancy,” Steve laughs. He turns the radio up a ways. “I bet she’s better than you give her credit for. It’s not a big deal. You just do what they do.”

Nancy listens to the song to try and hear it the way Steve does, but it’s way more complicated than he makes it out to be. He jumps in on the beat and matches the notes exactly, a big smile on his face like he thinks he’s proving his point about how easy it is. Nancy shakes her head at him, but she sings along, too, when he waves for her to join in. She falls out again at the end of _hidin’ somewhere in the night_ just so she can listen to him.

Steve holds his hands up when she turns the radio off, wrists still planted on the wheel. “See? Easy.”

“You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”

He grins, pleased. “Why? Because I think everyone can be a rockstar?”

“I’m not talking about everyone. I’m talking about you. You’re talented, Steve. You should do something with it.”

“Like what, Nancy?”

“Like try out for the school talent show or perform at the fairgrounds in the summertime or sing for sick people in the hospital. There’s so many options, Steve.”

“Look, even if I was kind of good at it, and even if people did want to hear, it’s not like it’s useful. I can’t get a job doing it or go to school to learn about it. What’s the point?”

She stares at him. “Will Byers can draw or paint anything. Would you tell him not to pursue that just because it’s safer to be an electrician or a plumber?”

“What’s wrong with being an electrician or a plumber?”

“What’s wrong with being an artist? Or a musician, Steve?”

He’s still smiling, but it looks like it’s finally starting to sink in for him that she’s serious. He shrugs and says, “I’m not gonna _be_ a musician. Why are you upset? It’s not like it’s my _dream_ to start a band or anything. Will Byers can do whatever he wants. I’m sure he’s as good as you say he is, but let’s face it, Nancy, I’m never getting out of Hawkins unless I get into some college somewhere, and we both know the odds of that happening aren’t great.”

“Steve, that’s not the point. If you want to be a company man or work in an office like my dad, that’s up to you. Of course it is. But you shouldn’t feel like you have to, and you shouldn’t feel like you can’t be excited about having this talent that _not everybody_ _has_.”

“Okay, then I’ll be excited about it and I’ll sing all the time,” he concedes, turning onto her street. “Will that pass muster with you?”

“It will, when you stop writing yourself off.”

“I thought you weren’t gonna keep trying to change me,” he muses, raising his eyebrows at her, still in a much more whimsical mood now.

Nancy shrugs and unbuckles her seatbelt. “We’re transitioning.”

“Oh, so this is what, a parting gift?”

“Yes.” She grins and leans across the center console to kiss him on the cheek. As she’s getting out of the car, she tells him, “Trust yourself, Steve, and be kind. Yes, to yourself.”

“Yeah, all right.” He rolls his eyes at her, but he’s smirking, too.

She’ll take it. She’s still smiling when she gets inside the house. Mom sees her right away and asks how it went.

“It was fine.”

“Did you end up working it out?”

“Oh, no. We broke up, but it’s… not a bad thing, I don’t think.”

Mom nods, and a second later she smiles. “That’s great, Nancy. I’m proud of you.”

 _Nancy’s_ proud. She wasn’t sure they’d get out of that conversation on good terms and still say everything that needed saying, but they got through it. Steve’s not heartbroken, and neither is she.

And not that they talked about it or that they needed to talk about it, really, but she has a feeling he won’t have as much trouble with being alone as she thought. Not just because he’s used to it, but because now he has an _assignment_. She hopes he takes it seriously. She’s gonna stay on him about it one way or another unless he asks her to stop, which he won’t, she already knows.

“Does this mean you’re finally going to put Joyce’s son out of his misery and ask him on a date?”

“ _Mom_ , it’s not like that.”

“Well, why not!”

Nancy retreats upstairs. “We are not having this conversation!”

 _They_ _aren’t_ , but she can’t help wondering. _Why not?_

After the easy, unthinkingly casual way Steve started in on Billy’s taste in music, why shouldn’t she start to learn the ins and outs of someone else? And why shouldn’t that person be Jonathan? She stops at the top of the stairs and thinks, _Well, why not?_

She backtracks downstairs and slinks over to the phone. As often as Mike’s slept over at Will’s, she knows the number by heart. The call goes through on the fourth ring.

_“Hello?”_

Nancy bites her lip. “Hi, Mrs. Byers.” She winces at the sound of Mom fumbling a cabinet or drawer in the kitchen and turns to face the phone. “Hi, this is Nancy. Is Jonathan there?”

_“Oh, Nancy! Of course, sweetie, he’s right here. Just one second. Jonathan!”_

There’s a moment of rustling static, and then: _“Nancy?”_

“Jonathan, hi. Uh, h-how are you?”

_“Good. What’s going on? Are you okay? I looked for you at the party last night, but Steve said you never went.”_

“Oh, the party, right. Sorry about that, I ended up — Steve…? You saw him last night?”

Mom pokes her head out of the kitchen, rapt, and Nancy ineffectually tries to shoo her away.

_“Just for a minute. I offered to take him home, but then this crazy-looking guy came over and started talking like he wanted to fight me, so Steve went with him instead. It was really weird. Have you heard from him? Is he okay?”_

“He’s fine, Jonathan,” she says through a laugh. It’s not funny, but God, it gets sillier by the minute. “You didn’t see anything else?”

_“No, he was by himself when I found him, and he kept saying it was a mistake that he went. I guess he felt pretty bad that he wasn’t with you. Are you sure he’s okay?”_

“Yeah, I just saw him. He’s really fine, I promise.”

 _“Oh, good then,”_ Jonathan says, sounding relieved, and why does that melt her heart? How could he care that much about someone who’s not even his friend?

“How’s Will?” she asks, getting them back on track. “Is he any better?”

_“He’s the same. He has another doctor’s appointment this afternoon.”_

“Do you think they’ll find anything?”

_“I don’t know, and I’m not sure I want them to. I mean, I do, but what if… what if it’s really bad?”_

Nancy closes her eyes. She knows that helpless feeling, and she doesn’t like it. “What if I told you I had a plan?”

There’s a pause, and then he says, _“Do you?”_

“Yes, but there’s a catch.”

_“A catch?”_

“Mmhmm.” She glances over her shoulder, remembers that her mom’s been watching this whole time, and waves for her to clear out. Again. “I’d have to tell you in person. Like, over dinner? Or — just whenever my mom’s not hovering over my shoulder.”

Jonathan laughs. _“Yours, too?”_

She laughs, her stomach flipping with something like weightlessness. “Yeah.”

 _“So um, you want to come over for dinner?”_ he says, like he’s clarifying her suggestion rather than extending an invitation.

“Are you asking me to?”

He hesitates and then, like he’s apologizing, he adds, _“We usually do pizza after Will’s appointments. It’s just easier.”_

“I like pizza. What time?”

_“Around seven? Mom and Will should be back by then. Bob’ll be here, too.”_

“It’s really okay if I come over?”

_“Yeah, of course. Hey, Nancy?”_

“Yeah?” She stares at her feet, bouncing on her heels as she waits on him.

_“Um, are — that is, I was wondering if… are you bringing Steve?”_

Her stomach flutters again, anxious but not _just_. “No, it would just be me. Steve and I… broke up, actually. Is that… okay? If it’s just me?”

 _“Yes — ”_ He clears his throat. _“Uh, I — I was only asking to get a headcount. For dinner.”_

“Oh.”

_“Am I picking you up?”_

“If you don’t mind.”

_“Sure, um. Bye, Nancy.”_

“Bye, Jonathan.” She hangs up the phone and turns around, already holding up her hands.

 _“It’s not like that?”_ Mom echoes, mouth open wide in combined shock and joy.

“Okay — clearly, he’s… very nice. We’re still not talking about it!”

Nancy flees back up to her room with Mom’s delighted laughter chasing her all the way up the stairs.


	9. Look Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three days after making out with Steve Harrington at that party, Billy does his damnedest to get back to business as usual and picks a girl to date. 
> 
> She’s not what he was expecting, but go figure. Nobody in Hawkins ever is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) Heteronormativity and toxic masculinity  
> 2) Billy being a hot mess, but what else is new  
> 

The last bell rings, and Katie packs up quickly, not wanting to miss Tina before cheerleading practice. She hangs back a second to wait for Dean, knowing he won’t want to miss her either. He looks up halfway through wiping down the countertop and knocks over a few aerosol cans of tarnish cleaner.

“Ah, shit,” he mutters, bending down to try to scoop everything up into his arms.

Katie sets her backpack down on a chair and goes to help him. A few more cans rain down between them, both of them leaning away to avoid getting hit.

“Ooh, Clemons!” Wyatt Fitzgerald crows, already running off. “Butterfingers!”

Mr. Greenbriar chases him out into the hallway, yelling that he just cost himself workstation privileges for a week. She sort of doubts it’s going to do anything to deter him from being a jerk in the future, but maybe it’ll give them a break from his antics for a while. Dean cradles two of the bigger cans in the crook of his elbow, grumbling.

“He’s such a dick.”

“Why not show him who’s boss then, Clemons? I bet you could take him,” someone says, and crouching to help, Billy Hargrove bites his lip around a smirk. “Not scared, are you?”

“Scared? No, no,” Dean murmurs, waving his hand and dropping one of the cans he’d just picked up. “I have what’s called a survival instinct. Guys like Wyatt Fitzgerald go for broke just to say that they can.”

Billy hums and stands with his haul to start setting them upright on the counter. “No guts, no glory, man.”

Katie scoffs and gets to her feet, too, saying, “Jill Rutherford broke her hand on his face last year. Where’s the glory in that?”

“Probably didn’t keep her wrist straight,” Billy muses, holding his hand out palm up. He waits for her to give him her hand and gingerly shapes it into a fist. “Thumb goes here if you don’t wanna take damage. Go for the jaw.” He guides her fist to the place he means. “Feel that? Your wrist buckled. Keep it straight, Simmons. Easy as that.”

“Oh, good,” Dean says, dropping the last of the cans back on the counter and straightening them out as best he can. “Yeah, show her so she can protect me.”

Billy gives him a flat look and releases Katie’s hand to catch one of the rolling aerosol cans before it drops off the edge of the table. “Be a miracle if you get through this semester without setting anything on fire.”

“He started a fire the first week of classes,” Katie says, grinning at Dean, who’s gone all red. “Thanks for your help, Billy. I’m Katie, by the way, and you know Dean.”

“Great. Hey, listen, how’d you like to go with me for a drive?”

“In that boss-ass Camaro? Hell yeah,” Dean says, not looking up from his backpack.

Billy’s face gets some color in it. He mutters, “Not you, Clemons.”

“Oh,” Katie says, heading out of the classroom ahead of them, both boys flanking her on either side. “Right now? I was gonna go meet my friend real quick.”

“I don’t mind waiting if you’re not gonna be long. What do you say?”

“Okay, sure. I’ll see you in a bit then.”

Billy falls out of step with them and heads off in the direction of the parking lot. Dean turns to watch him go and bumps her shoulder with his.

“I thought he’d be meaner,” he says, taking care to keep his voice down.

“Well, he’s still really new. I bet it’s a big change coming out here from California.”

“Yeah, that’s fair. He probably thinks he needs to look tough so people won’t give him any problems. I know the feeling.”

“You’ve never had a hard time making friends at least. Hey, Tina!”

“Hey! What took you guys so long?”

“Dean’s a klutz.”

“Oh, come on, you’re really gonna gloss over the most important part?” he crows, waving his hands around. “Guess who Billy Hargrove just asked out on a date!”

“It’s not a date. He just wants to go for a drive.”

“I’m with Katie on this one,” Tina says, leaning into her. “Poor guy never looks happy. Maybe he’ll cheer up if he makes some friends.”

“He and Tommy H. seem pretty tight,” Dean muses, opening his locker and dumping his backpack into it before slamming it shut. “Okay, on second thought, I see what you mean.”

Tina laughs, shouldering her cheerleading duffle and closing her own locker, too. She says, “Do you still wanna walk with me to the gym, or do you need to go meet Billy?”

“Do you mind if I head out? I let him know I’d be a minute, but I don’t want to be rude.”

“No worries. Dean, you coming?”

“Yep! Hey, make sure he acts right.”

“Oh, please, you don’t need to defend her virtue,” Tina teases, giving him a gentle shove toward the gym. “Have fun, Katie!”

“You, too!” she says, hugging her quickly before she and Dean head out.

Katie spots Billy pretty quickly once she gets to the front of the school. His car stands out anyway, but he’s had a way about him ever since he transferred. If he hadn’t approached her first, she probably would’ve tried to talk to him all on her own once the New Kid shine wore off and people quit gawking at him all the time. Tina’s right about him, in any case. He always seems so down.

He doesn’t notice her walking up on him. He’s too busy looking across the way at the middle school with a really intense look on his face.

“Hey, Billy? Did you still want to go?”

He glances up at her, that strange pressure easing, and flicks the cigarette he’d been smoking. He nods, saying, “Yeah. All set?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Cool. Your door’s unlocked.”

Katie gets into the car with him. It’s been a while since she did anything this spontaneous, and she gets why Dean was ready to go in her place. Holding her hand out the window to catch the wind while Billy guns it, she can almost trick herself into believing they’re actually going somewhere. She wonders if he needs to feel that flutter of escape, too. It’s hard to know what he’s thinking.

“How’re you liking it here so far?”

He glances over, face a little more blank than she’s seen it. He looks back at the road, shrugging. “Not what I’m used to.”

“I bet. Where’d you live in California? Right on the beach?”

“Couple places. L.A. for a while, then Modesto. San Francisco.”

“That’s a lot of moving around.”

“Guess so.”

Katie sneaks a look at him. She changes tack, asking, “Must’ve been nice to have your own car to make the drive here, at least. Have you had it a long time?”

“Not really.”

“What year is it? I thought late seventies at first, but it’s missing a few features you see on later models.”

The look he gives her this time is sharper, lined with curiosity. He says, “It’s a ’69.”

“Okay, that’s a start. Hand-me-down?”

He shakes his head, still giving her a suspicious look, and though he doesn’t ask, she knows what’s got him trying to see into her brain.

“I’ve been in Greenbriar’s Shop class since the sixth grade, and not that you care, but him and my dad are kinda drinking buddies. You pick up a few things. Plus, I like cars. Who’d’ve thought? All right then, not a family heirloom. Was it a gift?”

“Found it,” Billy says, cutting right to the chase.

“You found it? A Chevy Z/28 in pristine condition? What, do they grow on trees in California?”

“You know what they say, one man’s trash.”

She keeps looking at him for more. Clearly there’s a story there, and if she’s going to get him talking about anything, it’s gonna be this car. It has to be. She gives a little laugh and tries to coax him toward it. “Did it look this nice when you found it?”

“Didn’t even run at first. Took me a month to figure out why.”

“And the culprit?”

“Needed parts for the carburetor,” he murmurs, and it’s a good thing he never turned on the radio, or she’d have a hard time hearing him. “Battery was all shot to hell, too. Perfect storm. ‘Least the axle wasn’t cracked. Woulda been a bitch and a half to deal with. Had to replace a bunch of other shit. Brakes, tires, radio…”

“What are you even doing in Shop? Clearly you know your way around cars.”

“So do you,” Billy points out. He gestures with his chin out the window. “Okay if we stop here?”

“Oh. Sure? Actually, we passed a prettier spot about five minutes back if you want to loop around. Hawkins isn’t much to look at, but we’ve got a few postcards here and there.”

He makes a smooth U-turn, saying, “Tell me where you wanna go then.”

“You’ll know it when you see it. It’s a kind of clearing. It’ll be on our side this time. Some mornings or at dusk when it’s real humid but there’s no rain, this blue hum spreads out over everything like a mist, except you feel it, and if you’re ever up here at nighttime, there’s always a million fireflies out. The stars are really something, too. I hear you can’t even see them in bigger cities because of all the lights. Is that true?”

“Never noticed.”

“You never noticed the stars?”

“Never noticed if they were bright or not,” he clarifies, giving her a look. “We’ve got stars in California.”

“Not like out here, I bet. Come back out after dark and look up sometime. You might like it.”

He sinks back into silence, less remote now but more thoughtful. It feels strange to see him so subdued when she’s already much more accustomed to the picture he cuts stomping around campus with Tommy and Carol, talking loud and laughing louder. She wouldn’t’ve pegged him for a quiet guy at all, up against that image he works so hard to project. It’s early days, though. Can anyone really say they know him well enough to form an opinion on what he’s like?

“Here?”

“Yep, and you never answered my question,” she reminds him.

“What, about Shop?” he asks, pulling over onto the shoulder but staying out of the grass. He drops one arm through his open window. “I don’t know that much about cars. Only got this one going ‘cuz I had help.”

“Really? Somebody back in California?”

He doesn’t reply, but tension creeps into his face and hands. His silence, once comfortable, feels stony now. Restrained.

“Hey, I’m… sorry. Coming to a new school in the middle of a semester for your last year’s gotta be a lot to deal with. Are you okay?”

“You care?” he asks, turning the key so the engine dies.

“Yes,” she tells him, honest. She does. As much as he seems to not want to be, she thinks he’s interesting, and even if she didn’t, he must be overwhelmed. She can’t even imagine having to up and leave everything behind at the drop of a hat. “It’s none of my business, but I figure, since you invited me out here with you, maybe you were hoping I’d ask.”

“Is that why I brought you out here?” he asks, cutting a smoky glance her way.

She feels her face suddenly warm and keeps her voice even, pointing at him to say, “Well, it better not be because you thought you were gonna get lucky, Billy Hargrove. I know to keep my wrist straight, remember?”

There’s a beat and a moment of surprise cutting through the heat in his stare. He snorts and looks away. Good. Jerk.

“Hey, I don’t remember seeing you at the party. What’s up with that?”

Kind of a master at sidestepping questions he doesn’t want to answer, isn’t he? Well, fine. If he wants to play it like that, let him.

“My sister wanted to go trick or treating, so I ended up taking her.”

“Bummer.”

“Sort of? Maisie’s the cutest kid ever, so I don’t mind it all that much. I was pretty sore not getting to see Tina’s costume in person, though.”

“Oh, you’re in league with the alien. Shoulda known.”

Katie gives him a look, excited, starting to smile, and asks, “Did she get you, too?”

“She got everyone,” he grumbles. “She’s a goddamn nightmare.”

“Oh, my God, I have to tell her you said that. It’ll make her day.”

“What’re you, best friends?” he asks, facetious, like it’s a weakness to have friends.

“Ever since the fifth grade. While we’re talking about friends, though, if you ever wanted to sit with us at lunch, consider yourself invited. Contrary to what you’ve seen, Tina doesn’t actually bite, and Dean’s not so bad whenever he does sit with us. We really only started talking to him this year because of Shop, but he keeps things interesting. He actually used to be pretty chummy with Tommy H. and Carol Perkins, before.”

“Before?”

“You know, before they scooped you up. After Steve. You know Steve Harrington, don’t you? Sort of the end of an era, as dramatic as that sounds. But he’s really different ever since he started dating Nancy Wheeler.”

“Heard he went soft.”

“I guess that’s part of it. He’s definitely sweeter than he was last year. Not that he was ever a bully or anything, but he’s… nicer than he was.”

Billy scoffs, but he doesn’t tighten up again. He’s still just listening.

“Do you have something against being nice?”

“Nice doesn’t teach people not to fuck with you,” he tells her, grim.

“Hmm, well, ‘teaching people not to fuck with you’ doesn’t lend itself to making many friends.”

“You like nice guys so much, why don’t you date him?” he asks, and his tone is hard to place, some cross between sarcastic and bitter.

“Hawkins is a small town. I can’t make a habit of dating every guy I find sweet, and I mean, _Dean’s_ sweet, but I don’t want to date him. Not because there’s anything wrong with him, but I just don’t see him that way. We’re friends.”

“Do you want us to be friends, too?” Billy asks, pushing again for that slinky, almost lecherous smile that makes her skin feel hot, but there’s something off about it. Like a leaking boat or a suit that doesn’t fit right.

She doesn’t take the bait, not liking how close to sad it makes him look. Instead, she plays the oblivious card and says, “It’s not a bad idea. Then we can partner up in Shop, and Dean won’t spill oil all over my notebooks anymore. I can even teach you how to do an alignment all by yourself since I’m the seasoned mechanic here. Plus, you can tell Tina to her face that she’s a menace. It’s a win-win.”

He blinks, caught off his guard again, and she wishes she could tell him how much better a look that is on him. Something that’s very nearly relief flickers over his face, if he could just get himself to trust her for more than two seconds. He says, “You’re serious. You wanna be friends?”

“Sure, unless this was supposed to be a date? I mean, is this how it’s done in California?” she asks, smiling but not in a mean way, letting him in on the joke rather than making it at his expense. “Ask a girl on a whim to go for a drive with you like it’s 1950?”

That gets the color back up in his face, and gosh, he’s easy, isn’t he? Just a push in either direction and he’s floundering. He drops his hand from the wheel to turn in his seat and watch her get out of the car.

“Where are you going?”

“There’s all this green stuff on the ground called grass? I don’t know if you have it over on the West Coast?” She shuts her door and peers through the window at him. “Come on, humor me? It always makes me feel better.”

“What does?”

“The air. The leaves rustling. Sitting still, Billy. Have you ever tried it?”

He stares flatly at her for a beat, two, and sighs. He gets out of the car, walks around the front of it, and steps onto the grass, giving her a blank look. “Feel better yet?”

“You’re cute.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Just get down here, would you?”

He makes a great show of it, but he does eventually sit down right next to her, facing the road while she faces the surrounding woods. That same heated look from before that he can’t seem to keep fixed in place slips back into use. He leans in just a little to plant his hand on her other side, hemming her in. His hand is warm and so is his hip brushing hers, but the uncoiled laziness of his body doesn’t match with what she sees in his face. She can’t understand why he’s trying so hard.

“Billy, could you tell me something?” she asks, pressing back on his shoulder at the same time that she inches away from him.

He goes when she nudges him, doing nothing to try and close that distance once she starts looking for it, and that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what she keeps seeing in his eyes. Distance. His voice when he speaks comes out soft, like he’s asking himself more than he’s asking her. Something about it breaks her heart.

“What?”

“Are you okay?”

Like a scratched CD skipping, he repeats the question. Same whispered cadence, same resignation.

“You never said earlier if you were okay. Are you?”

Still he doesn’t answer, but at least he doesn’t try to change the subject either. They’re a little past that point now, or he is, definitely, the way he sort of retreats into himself and looks away.

“Hey, no pressure,” she tells him — because it seems like maybe he really needs to hear it. “If you just wanted to hang out and not be alone for a while, I get it. It’s no Sunset Boulevard, but the sky’s really pretty this time of day.” She covers his hand with hers, and it’s not the way he’s been trying to touch her but maybe it’s the way he needs to be touched. “Anytime you want, the offer to come sit with us stands. If you just wanna sit now, that’s okay, too.”

Billy meets her eyes for a second before turning his face back to the road again, scowling, up in his head again. Maybe a minute passes like that with his hand tucked up underneath hers. He relaxes in increments, eventually tipping his head back to squint up at the sky. With the sun in his eyes, he looks more like a boy than the king people say. She wishes she could tell him how much better it suits him.

“Fine, we can stay, but I gotta head back soon,” he grumbles, tucking his chin to glance at his watch. He eases his hand free and fiddles with one of the side buttons, maybe setting a timer. “Gotta grab my sister from the arcade later.”

“Sister?”

It’s subtle, but he scoots away from her before easing himself down to lie on his back in the grass. He amends his answer to _stepsister_ , but that’s the last of what he has to say.

That’s okay. She lies down, too, watching clouds merge together and separate over a deep blue sky. Every once in a while the wind whispers through the trees. It’s starting to get colder out, but they’ve got another few weeks before it’s jacket weather proper. She wonders if Billy’s ever even had a decent winter coat. He’s probably never needed one.

“You’re all right, Simmons.”

Warmth blooms in her belly, different from the other ways she’s felt warm in his company. A smile flickers over her mouth. “You’re not so bad yourself, Hargrove.”

Lying in the grass next to him, after everything, she does sort of wish he would touch her. She’s glad he doesn’t, though. It wouldn’t be worth taking away this hard-won peace.

His watch goes off a while later, and he drives her back to the high school. He doesn’t turn the car off or lean in close to try and kiss her, but he does look up and hold her eyes steadily. It feels like a massive improvement over before. Whatever was going on with him or whatever he tricked himself into thinking he had to do, he looks so much calmer for having done away with it.

She smiles. “This was fun. Don’t forget what I said, okay?”

“Yeah, sure, I know where to find you.”

“Good. I’ll see you around, Billy.”

“Later, Simmons.”

She makes her way to the field by the gym to wait for Tina to finish up so she can catch a ride home with her. Katie already knows she’ll want to hear how it went with Billy, but she’s not expecting it when a few of the other girls flock around her asking what it was like.

“What was what like?”

“Don’t play dumb, Katie,” Tammy says, flushed and grinning and bouncing on her heels. Her blonde hair’s up in a messy bun and falling into her face. “ _Billy Hargrove?_ Is he a good kisser?”

Katie looks around, dismayed, and says, “Tina!”

“I didn’t say anything,” she counters innocently.

“Your buddy Dean on the other hand,” Lindy adds, hands on her hips. “Boy _could not wait_ to give us the rundown.”

“Well? Did you kiss? Did you do more than kiss?” Jill asks, like she thinks she knows the answer already.

She understands with a sinking feeling where all that made up pressure Billy was feeling came from. Not so made up, as it turns out. Jeez, she’s glad she didn’t kiss him. What a trap, and no wonder he looked so miserable trying to live up to the gossip.

“It really wasn’t like that. Tina, can we go? Are you ready?”

“We’re going, we’re going!” Tina links their arms together and holds an adamant middle finger up over her shoulder as they go. Quieter, once they’re far enough not to be overheard, she says, “Sorry about that. You know how Dean gets.”

“Remind me to thank him for that at lunch tomorrow,” she murmurs, still on the flustered side. “Um, oh, speaking of, Billy might come sit with us sometime. _Might._ If he wants.”

“Are we hoping he will?”

“I am. You were right about him, Tina. He’s… really sad.”

She sighs, leaning into Katie’s side, and says, “Was he any less sad by the end of it?”

“I think so.”

“Well, then I hope he does take you up on your offer, and if he does,” she adds in a singsong voice. “I’ll make an extra effort to be nice to him.”

“How very considerate of you,” Katie teases. “Although, and I say this tentatively, you might not need to censor yourself too much. Sounds like you made quite the impression on Halloween.”

A grin overtakes her face, and a light that’s very specific to her knack for making scary things. She says, “I wish I’d had a camera mounted up somewhere so I could cut everyone’s reactions together. It was amazing. You would’ve been proud, and before you ask because I can tell you’re going to, yes, I got Billy, and yes, it was among my greatest triumphs. Him and Steve and Tommy. Just wish I’d gotten Wyatt.”

“You didn’t?”

“No. Well, ugh. Not technically. He thought I was a Halloween decoration and tried to pick me up off the counter.”

Katie laughs, and Tina glares, put out but in a mock kind of way. “He didn’t freak out when you started moving and yelling at him to put you down?”

“Of course he did, but it wasn’t the same! Katie! It’s not funny!”

She laughs all the way to Tina’s car, wishing all the while that Billy had stuck around long enough to hear this story. Katie managed to get him smiling, but Tina could’ve made him laugh. Maybe she’ll still get a chance to try.

Only time will tell. Until then, the ball’s in Billy’s court.


	10. Somebody That Makes Sense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve’s having trouble approaching Billy after what happened on Halloween, but Barb’s there to tell him it’s easier than he thinks it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) Implied homophobia (of the societal kind)  
> 2) School lunches  
> 3) Pining

Thursday at lunch sees Barb wandering around the cafeteria looking for Steve. She scans the tables but doesn’t see him at any of his usual spots. He hasn’t been making a big deal out of it, but she’s seen him sit at a different table every day this week.

On Monday he sat with Katie Simmons and Tina Nomura, on Tuesday he sat with some of the basketball team, and yesterday he stuck around to sit with Barb and Nancy like always, but now he’s nowhere to be seen. She’s not surprised he’s been branching out since he and Nancy broke up, and he mostly seems to be handling it okay. Barb just hasn’t had a chance to ask him. He made out like he was fine at lunch yesterday, but Nancy was there. Of course he’d want her to think everything was hunky dory with him.

She pushes on through the cafeteria, thinking maybe he’s outside. At least that’s more likely than having to knock down doors trying to find him in a classroom. Right away she spots him at the edge of the courtyard sitting on top of a table outside facing the track, feet balanced on the connected bench. She walks over and sets her tray on the table. He looks over his shoulder at her, smiling, and scoots over so she can sit next to him.

“Hey, Barb.”

“Hey, Steve.”

A bit ruefully, he asks, “Nancy didn’t send you, did she?”

“No, I came on my own. Besides,” she adds, looking at him, “that’s not really my style.”

He laughs, shaking his head. “Yeah, and I’m not your type, right?”

She starts in on her mac and cheese, shrugging a bit in response. He nods.

“Yeah, that would be weird. I’m glad you’re my friend, though. I mean, I know the whole, um, thing with Nancy kind of, well…”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he answers, automatic. And then smiling for show, he adds, “I’m fine.”

“It’s okay if you’re not.”

“No, but I am, I’m — uh, okay. So here’s the thing.”

She waits, but he sort of trails off, turning his gaze inward. Barb goes back to her lunch, not wanting to put him on the spot if there’s something he wants to talk about but he’s not ready yet. While she’s giving him space to put together a reply, she notices Tina walking out of the cafeteria with Katie and Billy Hargrove of all people. Seems like a weird choice, but they did pick up Dean Clemons just this year, too.

It’s none of her business. She pops the lid off her green beans and spears a few with her fork before turning back to Steve who looks like he’s starting to get the shape of what he wants to tell her.

“The thing is, there’s kind of… someone else. I don’t know if Nancy told you that part.”

“Super Secret Kiss Thief,” she confirms with a grave nod.

“‘Kiss Thief’?”

“Would you prefer an alliteration? Super Secret S… Smooch? Stealer?”

“No, Barb,” he laughs. “I was more asking about the ‘thief’ part. Kiss ‘Thief’?”

“They kissed you without your permission? I’d say that makes them a thief, but I’m getting you off-track. What about this person?”

“You don’t — like I hear you saying they and them. You don’t have to pretend not to know.”

“When was the last time you saw me pretending anything, Steve? This is me not blowing your cover. You have to be careful.”

Some color floods his face, and he ducks his head. Over his shoulder, she notices Billy glancing back at them. He doesn’t even seem like he’s aware that he’s doing it, and she doesn’t think Steve’s aware of it either until he looks up half a second after Billy’s turned away. His flush darkens, and like a shot, Barb knows.

“Oh, Steve,” she murmurs, making her voice as soft as it gets. “Billy Hargrove?”

He looks at her, stunned. “How the hell do you and Nancy do that?”

“Realistically, there aren’t that many people it could’ve been,” she reminds him, smiling a little. “Also, you were staring, and so was he.”

“He was, right?” he says, sounding genuinely dumbfounded. “He’s been — ” He glances around to check if the coast is clear but still lowers his voice anyway. “He’s been staring all week. I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Well, talk to him.”

“You mean you haven’t at all since it happened?”

“Ugh. No? It’s complicated.”

“What’s complicated about it?”

“ _He’s_ complicated. Barb, I mean, you should’ve heard all the stuff he said that night. Like he’s convinced he’s never gonna be happy with anyone.”

“Anyone?” she repeats, giving him a look.

He pauses, blinking, and mumbles, “Well, no, come to think of it, he did say… ‘them’ and ‘they’, I guess, but he also said he dates girls all the time, and everybody saw him take off with Katie Simmons after school on Monday. What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Tell him how you feel,” Barb says, plain and simple, because maybe people are complicated, but talking’s not. If she could fess up to Nancy about liking her all those years, Steve can confront the guy who stole a kiss from him at a Halloween party. It’s not hard, much as it might seem like it is. “Tell him, and if he listens, let him know what you want. Do you have any classes together?”

“We have English fifth period.”

“There you go! That’s perfect!”

He groans, clearly not liking his chances, and mutters, “Tell him how I feel. How I feel. How do I feel?”

“You’re making this way harder than it has to be, Steve.”

“What would you say? If it was you?”

She takes a bite of cornbread and looks around him to where she saw Billy disappear with Tina and Katie in the direction of the field. There’s not much for it if Billy and Katie did start dating, but Barb knows how she felt when she thought everything in her heart would have to stay locked up in there forever.

So what would she say if it was her? What did she say to Nancy?

“I guess… I’d tell them the truth. I’d tell them if thinking about them made my chest hurt or if seeing them smile gave me butterflies or if being close to them made my heart beat faster. Stuff like that.”

Steve’s watching her when she glances over at him. His eyes are wide and focused. He says, “Do you actually want to tell someone that? ‘Cuz you totally should, Barb. Whoever it is, I bet they’d feel awesome if they knew you felt that way.”

“I don’t anymore, but I did. I…” She looks around, too, and jeez, they’ve been doing a lot of that in just this one conversation. “I told her how I felt.”

“And?” He leans in, eager to know more, and she never in a million years thought she would be able to say anything remotely like this to Steve Harrington, or that he would be hanging on her every word to hear how it turned out. “What happened?”

“We’re friends,” she says, and a feeling of peace, at once so fluid but simultaneously so grounding suffuses her entire being. “It’s how it should be. I didn’t say what I said to make her feel something for me that she couldn’t. I said it because I wanted to be in charge of my own happiness, and you can’t be happy if you’re always lying about what you feel and what you want. Do you know what I mean?”

For a long time he doesn’t reply. He just keeps looking at her with those big brown eyes of his, seeing — everything, maybe. But that’s okay. She’s not afraid of him. She hasn’t been for a long time.

“It was Nancy,” he whispers, finally shocked.

She tips her head at him, smiling. “See? It’s not that hard to guess most of the time.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“You’re not really surprised, are you?”

“Well, no. Nancy’s easy to love.”

“She is.”

And there they are, two kids who used to love the same girl. Barb gets up to toss her tray, and Steve’s staring down at his clasped hands when she comes back to sit next to him.

“There’s somebody that makes sense for us, Steve. Both of us. I don’t know if we know them yet, or if it’ll be a long time before we do, but they’re out there. The only way you’re ever gonna know them when you see them is if you can make yourself say the words when it counts.”

“What words?”

“The truth,” she tells him, leaning into him. “Whatever it is.”

The first bell rings, and Steve jolts as if waking from a trance. He jumps off the table and holds his arm out to her like a knight. “Walk you to your locker?”

“Sure.”

She takes his arm, and notices while she’s getting down off the table that Tina and Katie are making their way inside, too. She doesn’t see Billy anywhere, but that might work in Steve’s favor. Barb’s rooting for him, in any case. In the interest of trying to lend a supportive ear, she had stopped herself from having much of an opinion about his choice, but that’s the way it should be. He didn’t choose Billy anymore than Barb chose Nancy. It just happened, and good for him for deciding to do something about it.

At her locker, Barb grabs her books and roots around for her binder. It just so happens she looks up at the wrong — right? — time and catches Billy staring again from several locker clusters away. A second later his eyes dart to hers, and the torn open look on his face shutters. He slams his locker shut and storms off in the other direction.

Barb releases a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“What’s wrong?”

“Huh? Oh, I can’t — find my — ” She fumbles the wrong binder out of her locker and it drops between her feet.

Steve swoops down to get it for her and gets a look at the comic book sliding out of the inside pocket. “Guess I know what you get up to during Homeroom,” he muses, smirking and flipping through one of her dad’s Incredible Hulk comics. He pops the binder open and snaps the comic closed to fit it back into the sleeve, pausing to tilt his head at the cover. “Look at that, it’s the Wombat guy or whatever — oh, or Wolverine, I guess. Says it right there.”

Barb hides her laugh under the guise of finding the correct binder for Ms. Carter’s class and tucking a smaller paperback ahead of the section dividers. She takes the other binder off Steve’s hands and shelves it in between two textbooks so it’ll stand up straight.

“What’s that you were saying, Steve?”

“At Tina’s party. Lindy Louder went as that guy in the comic. With the — _shhhink! —_ claws, you know?”

She nods solemnly. “Wombat.”

“Wolverine,” he says, chuckling and dropping his hands. “Okay, obviously I don’t know my superheroes, but she looked really cool all decked out like that. I bet you guys would have a lot to talk about.”

“Lindy Louder,” Barb repeats, wondering.

He beams and looks up at the first warning bell. “I gotta go. If I’m late to French one more time Ms. Kurosawa’s gonna make me read Émile Zola in front of the class. Again.”

“Steve, before you do, what we were talking about before? Go for it.”

“Yeah? Really?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“Okay, but you should let me introduce you to Lindy. Can I? I have a good feeling.”

“Fine,” she says, laughing again. “Now go! You’re gonna be late!”

He takes off, and Barb has to run, too, to make it to class on time. She takes her seat next to Nancy and catches her breath while the last bell rings. She feels super conspicuous until Wyatt Fitzgerald strolls in a full minute after the bell. He gets written up, of course, but he doesn’t look even a bit frazzled, not like Barb who still keeps trying to fix her hair.

“You look fine,” Nancy whispers, sliding a pencil over for Barb to start taking notes. “Quit worrying.”

“How was your makeup test?”

“Fine. Boring. Lunch?”

Barb bites her tongue, not wanting to talk while Ms. Carter’s trying to teach. She writes _Later_ at the top of a fresh piece of paper. Nancy hums softly and goes back to taking notes and flipping open her copy of _Frankenstein._

It’s torture just having to wait for the end of class, but she knows that everything she wants to say won’t be safe to talk about until they’re in her car and headed home at the end of the day. Keeping that in mind, she tucks into her notes and tries to focus on the lesson.

She wonders distantly if Steve had to read in front of the class after all, and she wonders what Billy’s doing right now or if he has any idea what’s about to happen. She almost wishes she could be there to see it and to tell him not to be so afraid. He doesn’t know how good he’s about to have it.


	11. Big Epic Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy’s mostly given up on the idea of his life being what he wants it to be, but he has an opportunity here and now to turn it around. He’s faced with a choice, an honest-to-God chance, and a boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) PTSD and suicidal ideation.  
> 2) Graphic flashbacks to violence resulting in a panic attack.  
> 3) Physical abuse, threats of violence, slurs, implied racism & homophobia, and compulsory heteronormativity of the Neil Hargrove variety.
> 
> +1) Also, sex. Where none of those ugly things happen.  
> +2) Billiam Hargrove trying his best.
> 
> (Billy is now 17 and Steve is 18.)
> 
> **Please scroll back up and read the warnings if you skipped them.**

The thing is, Billy can do all this school bullshit. It’s not hard, and it’s the same in Hawkins as it is in San Francisco. It all just repeats: read this book, foil those binomials, remember that dead white guy’s name. Easy. That’s why he’s not sweating the poem he’s gotta present to the class tomorrow.

Ms. Carter assigned everybody their poems on Monday. She’s even offering extra credit to anyone who can recite their deal from memory, and fuck, Billy doesn’t need the boost, but it’s easy pickings. He has it down pat the first day just to prove to himself how fucking easy it is. _Autumn rain, the sodden pasture lane,_ whatever the fuck else. He could say it in his sleep at this point. The rhyme schemes fucking repeat just like everything else. It’s not rocket science.

Billy kicks ass in all of his classes, but Ms. Carter’s is his favorite, and that means it’s also his best. He probably could’ve even been in the AP class if he hadn’t fucked around so much his junior year. He has her class with Harrington, is the real kicker, and as easy as all this stuff is to Billy, Harrington cannot fucking hang.

It’s not even that Billy’s looking. _He’s not._ It’s just that he hears it when Harrington misses a softball question, and he sees it when his papers come back with way more red marks than they should. How could he not? It’s bright red ink and it’s slashed all over Harrington’s assignments _every time_ like the pen exploded over it. Billy does everything in his power to keep himself from noticing, but guileless brown eyes reel him in no matter what, same here as in California. Goddamn it.

If Billy had any notion of fucking Harrington out of his system on Halloween, it’s long gone now. He’s not getting Steve Harrington off his mind in any capacity anytime soon, and something tells him that would be true even if Harrington had wound up inviting him up for more that night. Same as ever, people never fucking change.

Does he really think he’s ever gonna stop wanting what he can’t have? He’s on a hamster wheel of black eyes and frantic hookups and lies that leave a copper taste in his mouth, and it’s all the same thing over and over again. Here, San Francisco, Modesto, it doesn’t matter. He’s fucked.

The bell rings, and Billy closes up all his shit and gets ready to go. He’s been looking forward to Shop class all day now that he has an actual friend to talk to, and to his credit, Clemons has taken the whole losing his partner thing in stride. They’re all probably that much more likely to die in a terrible fire without Simmons hand-holding him through everything, but he’s not sure he wouldn’t consider that an improvement. Not that he still thinks about dying in the way that he used to, but imagining a scenario where everything just fucking stops is the only thing that ever gives him peace anymore.

He gets to the front of the classroom and stops, hearing his name.

“Billy, would you mind waiting a moment? I’d like to talk to you in private.”

People smirk and whisper, but Ms. Carter’s not like that and Billy would know. He’s damn good at making people want to look at him, but not Ms. Carter. Her eyes never snag on him like cotton catching on a hangnail, and for someone who likes to be looked at as much as Billy does, he’s genuinely surprised how much of a comfort it is.

“Sure, Ms. Carter.”

“Give me just a minute to tidy up.”

Billy hunkers down on some girl’s desk while she’s still putting her things away. She gives him a bland look of annoyance, muttering something under her breath.

“What’s that,” he purrs, checking her notebook before she shuts it. “Louder?”

“I said, _Wow, turns out Billy Hargrove’s ass does quit, and right on my desk!_ Lucky me.”

It’s a tough fucking crowd here in Hawkins, Jesus. Is it weird that he kind of likes it? He’s seen just about every kind of disinterest imaginable — Simmons’ incorruptibility, Nomura’s tickled apathy, and Louder’s outright hostility. God help these guys that are out here trying to get a date for real because what the fuck. Billy’s still just staring at her, enthralled. She reminds him of Max, tiny, full of righteous fury, and radiating bullshit repellant like a kind of aura.

“Personally I don’t know what Katie sees in you, but it’s definitely not your manners.”

Over her head he sees Harrington glance up from where he’s been taking his sweet time packing up his shit. Sees him snicker. Billy’s face goes hot.

“Christ, have your desk back then.”

He doesn’t watch her get up and go. It’d be too easy to catch another glimpse of Harrington, and fuck that. Harrington’s been avoiding him since Halloween, and whatever, the feeling’s fucking mutual. Billy doesn’t care. Guy doesn’t want what Billy’s selling, that’s his right. They don’t have to talk about it. Billy scoffs at himself, sits on the edge of an empty desk closer to Ms. Carter’s, and makes himself smile.

She smiles back, warm, asking, “How are you, Billy?”

“Good, Ms. Carter, and you?”

That smooth, charming voice he reserves for women of a certain age never works on her, but he likes to break it out anyway, and sue him. It’s fun to try to fluster her, even if he knows he can’t. Maybe especially because he knows he can’t. She finishes tucking a folder into her bag and fixes him with a kindly smile, tugging her sleeves down one after the other over her wrists. It’s a kind of habit of hers, he’s noticed.

“Doing well, thank you.”

“So you wanted to talk to me?”

“Yes, I wanted to ask you about your plans for next year.”

“I’m gonna need a cigarette if you’re gonna ask me about next year, Ms. Carter.”

Before she stopped him he had one all lined up and ready to go before next period. Since it’s looking like he might not have time, he’s thinking about skipping to smoke it up under the bleachers or something.

“That’s fair,” she says, not bothering with any of that bullshit about how he’s too young to smoke. “What if I gave you a few days to think it over? We could meet after to discuss.”

“I don’t know, Ms. Carter.”

He thumps his heel on the tile, looking away and making eye contact with Harrington where he’s finally ducking out into the hallway. His heart skips a beat, but he makes himself look at Ms. Carter and tries to ignore the heat rising up the back of his neck. She says something, and he doesn’t quite catch it. He glances at her mouth, trying to see the shape of it, but it’s too late.

“What?”

“College, Billy. I really think you’d have your pick of universities based on your writing ability alone.”

He tries not to look too disappointed but can’t help a tiny flinch. He thought that might’ve been what she said. Mumbling, he tells her, “My dad’s not gonna pay for me to go to some fancy school.”

“You could apply for a scholarship. I’m prepared write you a letter of recommendation and compile a checklist of things you need to have in order to submit your applications. We’re coming up on the December deadline, but I think you have a genuine shot here.”

She looks so hopeful and so excited for him that Billy doesn’t know what to do with it. Something really close to sadness and just as near to hope squeezes tight around his throat like a fist. College applications. Scholarships. A deadline in December. Is she serious? She thinks he can get out of here on his merit and nothing else? Why?

It scares him how much he wants to believe what she’s saying, especially since him and wanting things — especially as much as he already wants this — haven’t gone hand in hand all that much lately. Or ever, really. Does he think this time it’ll be any different? His gaze slides back in the direction of the doorway, but Harrington’s gone, probably halfway to his next class by now.

“At least promise me you’ll think about it. We can arrange a time to meet here after school sometime next week to go over your options, or if it helps, we can involve your parents — ”

 _“No,”_ drags out of him, too rough for what he likes anyone to see unless he’s trying to start a fight.

His stomach flips and he opens his mouth to apologize, but Ms. Carter barely blinks. She just nods, almost too neutral in the face of the switch that just flipped in him. It almost makes him feel more exposed than if she’d gotten upset, but her voice, already soothing and stable, gentles.

“Your opinion is the only one that matters here, Billy. If you don’t want anyone else’s input, then you don’t need it. What if we meet tomorrow after the final bell and talk it over, just the two of us. Would that be okay with you?”

He nods, and his hands are slick with sweat when he lifts them from the desk he’s been leaning against. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Billy?” she starts, before trailing off. She fusses with her sleeves one more time, hesitating, and pulls them down over her wrists.

“Ma’am?”

“Oh, yes, do you need a note for your next class? I wouldn’t want you to get written up.”

“Nah, I’m…” Billy trails off, realizing at the last second that he shouldn’t be telling her his plans for ditching class. “I don’t have a long way to go.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Was there something else, Ms. Carter?” he asks, keeping his voice low like coals in a fireplace.

She starts to say something, stops, and visibly changes her mind. “Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow. Have a good day, Billy.”

It takes everything in him to keep from running out into the hallway, but the thought of looking any weaker than he just did helps him keep his head. Forget the bleachers, and forget Shop. He’s jumping in his car and going for a ride. At least that might help to clear his head.

“Hey, Billy!”

He stops so suddenly his boots squeak on the floor. Harrington jogs to catch up to him, a textbook tucked up under one arm. The first bell rings, and all Billy can do is stare. He knows Harrington’s gotta get to the Math and Sciences Building before the late bell rings, but he waited up for him anyway.

“Hey,” he says again, softer. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I was just trying to catch you before next period.”

“Were you,” Billy mutters, shaking a cigarette into his palm and forcing himself to be cool.

Ms. Carter glides out into the hallway right as he’s lighting up. She doesn’t say anything about the cigarette he’s not supposed to be smoking, and she doesn’t say anything about how close Harrington’s standing either. She just smiles and says, “You boys are going to be late to class.”

“Oh,” Harrington mumbles, smiling back. “Sorry, Ms. Carter. We’ll get going.”

Harrington’s already keyed in on Billy again, so he doesn’t notice Ms. Carter stop mid-turn to level Billy with _a_ _look_ that’s both tender and amused. Billy doesn’t know what she sees or what she _thinks_ she sees, but there’s no time to react. She’s gone around a bend in the hall before he can get the air to unstick from his lungs. His heart pounds in his chest and he turns on his heel to go.

Around his cigarette, he grumbles, “What do you want, Harrington?”

“Can you just stop and talk to me for a second?”

“Oh, he wants to talk.”

“Yeah, I wanna talk. Billy,” he gets out, trying to come around in front of him. “Can we — ”

Billy grabs Harrington by his shirt and shoves him into some lockers. Just like that red cup flying out of his hand at the party, his textbook hits the ground with a resounding smack. He keeps an arm barred across Harrington’s chest and plucks the cigarette out of his mouth. The late bell rings three times, and Harrington just keeps staring at him the same way he does when Billy knocks him down in basketball practice, open and alarmed and _fucking eager_ and struggling not one bit to get away from him. Not even when Billy blows smoke into his face.

“You were saying?”

“About the other night.”

A lick of warmth lashes deep in his belly. Billy takes another long drag off his cigarette, trying to ignore it. He says, “What about it?”

Harrington searches Billy’s eyes, flagging, like he thought as far ahead as getting Billy’s attention but didn’t have a plan for what to do once he had it. After a second he says, “I’m… Billy, I’m really into you.”

Billy blinks, his cigarette burning down between his fingers. His heart leaps up into his throat. He’s got a protest on the tip of his tongue, burning up just like the end of his cigarette, but it won’t come.

“And I know I — I don’t even know you, y’know? But I wanna try, and I wanted you that night, too. I wanted you to stay.” His eyes search again, imploring. “Not just for what you said we’d do — and don’t get me wrong, I definitely wanna do that with you — but I want it to be ours. Something we don’t have to steal.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“What you were talking about. Finding a nice guy, wearing my jacket — ”

“I didn’t mean your fucking jacket,” Billy cuts him off, face going hot in an instant.

“Why not? You’d look awesome in my Letterman.”

“That’s not the point!”

Shrugging, he says, “Maybe not for you _.”_

“Got quite the pair on you, don’t you, Harrington?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he murmurs, pink lips stretched wide in a grin that makes Billy wonder. In a rush, he adds, “I know you’ve thought about it. Come on, Billy, the way you’ve been staring at me?”

“You mean the way you’ve been fucking ignoring me all week? You mean that, Harrington?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, softly, so fucking softly, winding his fingers carefully around Billy’s wrist. “It wasn’t because of what we did.”

“And what’s that?” Billy asks, clinging to anger and daring him to say it, _needing_ him to say it. “What’d we do?”

Harrington smiles dopily and says, “You kissed me.”

That warmth again, too much and _too good,_ twists in his stomach. He stares at Harrington’s hand twined around his, thumbing at the meat of his thumb. He should pull away. Either one of them should, but they don’t, and the way Harrington’s looking at him makes Billy’s skin feel warm and sweet, so much so that it’s almost unbearable. He’s got half a mind to run.He was ready for this when he thought it was just gonna be a quick and easy lay immediately consigned to secrecy, but he doesn’t know what Harrington’s asking for now. It’s too much to even consider. He tears his hand away and takes a staggering step back. Harrington’s still just draped against the lockers, watching him with wide brown eyes, eager as ever.

He makes an effort to stand up straighter, saying, “Look, that night… it was bad timing.”

“What’s better about now?” Billy asks, winded and confused, trying his hardest to keep from caring how this conversation turns out.

“Nancy and I broke up. Not because of you or what happened. I mean, it didn’t help, but…” He drops his arms in a shrug. “I needed time to deal with it. I didn’t think you’d care, but then you wouldn’t stop looking at me, and… okay, I could’ve handled this better. That’s my fault. Sorry.”

 _Holy shit_ , Billy thinks, still winded and more confused. He broke up with his girlfriend. What the fuck.

“Listen, you and Katie,” he continues, nervous again. “Are you guys together?”

“No,” Billy murmurs. He doesn’t know who started that rumor, but he kind of thinks he should kiss them on the mouth for doing him that solid.

Harrington brightens. “Then do you maybe wanna — I mean, could we go out tonight? Grab dinner, catch a movie? There’s this one about Mozart that I really wanna see… ” He trails off at whatever look Billy’s giving him. “O-or I think _Terminator_ might still be showing? I keep hearing how awesome it is. So? Do you want to?”

Billy takes another step back, muttering, “Hard pass, Harrington.”

And then he makes himself walk away because _what the fuck_. Harrington doesn’t know what he’s asking for. _He_ _can’t_. Maybe Billy’s underestimating him, though, because as he’s stomping away, all he can think about Harrington’s casual confidence and that shit he said about Billy wearing his jacket, and _what the fuck?_

In a lot of ways, Hawkins is exactly what he thought it would be, but in a lot of other ways, it’s not what he expected at all. Because first of all, Steve Harrington, and because second of all, _Steve fucking Harrington_.

Billy didn’t think he’d have the stones to own what they did, and definitely not so soon after the fact. He thought it’d be him and Wheeler for the rest of the year, and miserable, heated looks in Ms. Carter’s class that neither of them could do anything about. He didn’t think Harrington would wait up for him after class and ask Billy to go on a fucking date with him, and what’s Harrington thinking, that Billy’s gonna say yes? He can’t.

He wants to, but even if he hadn’t just blown his chance, there’s no way it could ever work. Dwelling on it’s not gonna do him any good, and neither is wishing things could be different because things are never different. Not ever.

Except he remembers what Harrington’s mouth felt like. He remembers the heat of his hands and how his eyes flashed when Billy shoved him into the wall, and there’s other shit he’s remembering, too, like the soft, wounded look in Harrington’s eyes when Billy shot down his proposal for a one-and-done kinda romance. Billy’s accepted that he’s only ever gonna have scraps and he’s learned to think of whatever he’s lucky enough to get as full meals, but Harrington’s over here trying to give him something it never even occurred to him to want.

What’s that saying? Give a guy a fish, he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, he’ll be fed every day of his life? That’s what this feels like, and that’s what he said, isn’t it? That he doesn’t want to steal it. That he wants it to be theirs.

Something they can have together. Does he even know how impossible that is?

Billy never wore Gene’s jacket exactly, but he did steal an earring, once, and he didn’t have the damn thing in his ear longer than a month before his dad ripped it out. Granted, that probably had more to do with the part where he caught them kissing out in the open where anyone might see, but the point remains. He doesn’t get to fall in love, and he sure as shit doesn’t get to find any happiness in it if he does.

He’s found ways to cope. He pierced his other ear, got a new earring that didn’t mean anything to him, and learned how to put all the warmth he can’t have into smiles he doesn’t feel for people he doesn’t want, _but he wants Harrington._ He talks like he wants Billy, too, and just that thought warms him all over. Like floodgates banging open, it gets him thinking about the rest of it. He wants to know what Harrington tastes like stone sober and what else gets him feeling good when he can’t fall back on reefer and beer to do the trick. He wants to know if he’s ever that bossy about anything else, or if it’s just schoolyard bullshit that gets him going. Harrington’s got buttons, and Billy wants to press ‘em.

Somehow, in spite of how goddamn distracted he is, he’s right on time picking Max up from the middle school. She doesn’t want to talk to him, but he keeps seeing her with that boy and it’s just too fucking ironic. If he hadn’t spent the last hour trying to talk himself out of climbing Harrington like a fucking tree the very next time he’s alone with him, he might even believe her when she says it’s nothing to worry about. The crux of the issue is his dad wouldn’t allow it.

She’s clear for as long as he doesn’t know, but the moment he catches wind of it, Billy’s not sure what happens then. He just knows what happened to him when the gun went off in his direction, and he’s not gonna let that fucking happen to Max. Not when all her scars are from falling off her skateboard or having her appendix taken out.

The only way Billy’s ever known how to keep her safe is with fear. It’s all he has is his fucking memories and the crack in his voice when he yells at her. He pulls to a stop at an empty intersection and glares at the red light laughing in his face. He thinks about Harrington’s face burning pink remembering what they did. Thinks of his hand closing around Billy’s wrist. What does he think, that he’s not gonna run right back to Harrington and give him whatever the fuck he wants as many times as he’ll let him?

 _Fucking hypocrite,_ he thinks. He smacks the steering wheel, frustrated, not knowing how to fix it.

The red light turns green, and he punches it. Max doesn’t say a word. Why would she? He’s given her every reason to shut him out forever, and he deserves that from her, but this isn’t about the two of them being friends. It’s about protecting her. It always has been.

Ever since he met her, Billy’s known the way with Max was never gonna be his dad’s way. That doesn’t mean he knows how to talk to her. For all the time they’ve spent alone in this car together, he doesn’t think he’s ever actually had a real conversation with her, and he knows with an ugly, startling clarity that that’s what she needs from him. That’s all she’s ever needed from him. He steels himself and switches the radio off.

“Listen. You know what happens.”

“What happens, when?” Max mumbles, looking like she’d rather be anywhere than right here with him.

He doesn’t blame her. He knows what he’s like, and he’s like that on purpose. Only reason he’s trying it a different way now is he’s got Steve Harrington on the brain, and he can’t tell himself it’s any different for Max and this kid he keeps seeing her with. Just because he had to learn the hard way that there’s a price for going against his dad’s fucked up idea of the world doesn’t mean he’s gonna let it ruin her like it ruined him.

Five minutes from the arcade he pulls over off the side of the road and stares out the windshield. He keeps the engine running and asks her, “Why’d we have to move out here, Max?”

She doesn’t answer, probably remembering how this conversation went last time. He’s remembering, too. Hard to forget nearly mowing down a bunch of kids. Hell, he was angry. He’s still angry, but for the first time since he broke it off with Gene, it feels like there might be more available to him than just that anger. He tugs at the scar in his earlobe, thinking, and when he lets go to look at her, her face is all white with fear. It’s a look he knows well. He feels it on his face whenever his dad comes after him.

“I know you know,” he murmurs. “Say it.”

“Your dad found out about Gene.”

His skin crawls, and he looks away, suddenly nauseous hearing his name in her mouth.

It summons up a world of pain and fear he’s tried his hardest to bury. Because his dad hits him, sure, he always has, but not like that. Not usually. Not since Mom walked out.

He’s never spent a lot of time thinking about that day at the beach when Nora saved his life and enlisted her dad’s help saving the rest of him. He doesn’t think of it all that often now either, but that day, crumpled on Sam’s lawn, wheezing and blinking through liquid fire, he’d found himself wishing the ocean could’ve swallowed him whole after all. At least then it had felt like a choice, and at least he hadn’t come out of the water any worse than he went in.

But after his dad was done with him and after a lot of buzzing, radiating pain in his skull, the hearing in his left ear never actually came back. Did it happen before he hit the ground, or did it happen after everything went black and the thought _I won’t anymore_ carried inside his skull like a gunshot? He’s never known. He’s tried his hardest not to think about it.

He looks out the window, painfully, horribly aware of the world beginning to spiral away from him. It happened a lot in the hospital, but he thought he was over it. Apparently not.

“Billy?”

 _God, Max._ Max watching him take desperate sips of air to keep from puking or crying or both.

“Just don’t let my dad catch you,” he warns. His voice comes out thick with tears unshed and a scream he keeps barred up always. If he lets it out now, he won’t be able to stop. “Because you know what happens. Don’t you?”

She stares at him without moving, without breathing, and then she nods, cheeks splotchy and nose gone all red. The cage locked tight around his heart loosens. No matter how he’s acted and no matter what he hoped it would make her feel, he’s not mad that she hates him. He hates himself, too, for the way that he is, for bending down to kiss Gene through the open window of his beat up Honda Civic, for thinking he could get away with it, for believing he could ever really be safe and happy and free.

He was, though. Holding the collar of Gene’s shirt with one hand and the car door with the other, he tricked himself into thinking he’d found somewhere he could belong.

It lasted right up until he felt fingers in his hair gripping tightly and his dad was yanking him out of the window just to force him back up against the side of the car. Billy never held it against Gene that he took off. He had a chance, and Billy didn’t. Easy math.

No reason to get upset at all, except when he wipes at his face, those tears he was fighting are out and his chest surges into free fall. Panic grips him through his skin, wet cement pouring down his throat. It piles up in his chest and spreads to his fingers, locking him up like the fucking tin man getting caught in the rain. He tips his head back and tries to count to ten. Tries to think at all.

“Billy, you have to breathe,” Max tells him, quiet. Always looking out for him, no matter how big an asshole he’s being.

He makes a noise. It’s not language, but it’s as close as he can get. Max only ever gains traction when he starts to lose his, though, so she doesn’t back off. She’s never been the type.

“That nurse said to time your breathing when you get like this. You’re not breathing.”

He shakes his head, trying to tell her that he can’t. Of course. He can’t protect her, he can’t talk to her, he can’t be what she needs. He can’t be what anyone needs. Can’t even fucking die right, and now he’s trapped in here with her and there’s nowhere to hide, and what was he thinking? Why did he do this? Why did he bother trying to tell her anything about what happened that day?

“Billy, your lips are turning blue. Billy? Billy!” Her hand is small in his, clutching after him, and then she’s latching onto his wrist feeling for a pulse. “Holy shit, okay. Okay, Billy, it’s okay. Breathe in. Breathe in, you jerk! You don’t get to do this to me again! Breathe in! A little more. Okay, out. Breathe out. In. Out.” She claps her hand over his chest where his shirt opens, and just like that, he can feel the individual thumps of his heartbeat. “You’re such a dickhead,” she mumbles, but her voice is shaking just as much as he’s shaking everywhere. “There are these things called conversations, Billy? Normal people use them to talk about their feelings.”

“Sounds nice,” he chokes out, going to peel her hand away, but she doesn’t budge, and his fingers aren’t working well enough to pry her off.

“It doesn’t have to be a huge fucking ordeal every time, Billy.”

“I’m sorry, fuck.”

She looks at him, grounding him with her hand and with her stare. She’s got her dad’s eyes, too, just like Billy. She says, “Are you okay?”

Simmons looked at him just like Max is looking at him now. He must really be slipping. Well, obviously.

“What do you think, Max?”

“I think you’re a disaster,” she tells him, flatly disappointed but with an edge of something else riding alongside it, “and I think it’s stupid that you can’t just admit it, even after all of that.” She’s still just holding his heart in her hand, even when he looks away sharply. “What’s going on? You’ve never tried to talk to me about what happened. Why start now?”

“Already told you,” he mumbles, twisting out from under her hand so she lets go all on her own.

“No, you didn’t,” she says, and her voice is starting to waver the way it does when she’s trying her hardest to keep from shouting at him.

“I told you! I told you to be careful! That’s it. That’s all.” He checks his mirrors and jerks the car back onto the road. He can’t take much more of this. “Do whatever the hell you want, Max. You always do, but just don’t let him fucking catch you at it because there’s only so much standing in his way I can do.”

She sinks back into silence, and he keeps on in the direction of the arcade since she doesn’t tell him any different. For once he appreciates the quiet. He’s said more shit in the last three hours than he has in the last three months combined. More than she’s used to, that’s for damn sure. _Billy’s_ not used to it. She probably thinks he’s been body-snatched or something.

There’s already kids swarming the doors of the arcade by the time they pull up at the entrance. He brakes but doesn’t bother throwing the car into park. She usually scrambles out of the car as soon as she can just to get away from him. Sometimes she doesn’t even wait till the car’s stopped moving. She’s not going anywhere now, though, and she’s not looking at him either.

“Max,” he tries.

“You really don’t… care if I’m friends with Lucas?”

Kids stream into the arcade in waves all around them, and he leans back in his seat, not seeing them. He’s thinking about that page he tore out of the phonebook in Gene’s apartment over a year ago. He’s remembering the words, _When you love someone, whoever it is and whatever way that you love them, you’d defy God Himself to be with them._

“You didn’t care about Gene,” he says without turning to see what her face does. “Look, you said it. I don’t know how to fucking do this, so I don’t know if I’m gonna say it right or if I’ve been saying it right. But you know what happened. I tried to be what he wanted, but it never meant shit to him.” The inside-scream writhing at the back of his throat again begs to touch oxygen and burst into flames. He shuts his eyes and strangles it. “Max,” he tries again, and goddamn it, he just stopped fucking crying.

“He put you in the hospital, Billy.”

A feeling like turbulence under his skin replaces the breath in his mouth. A sound tears out of him, and he presses the back of his hand to his mouth, wanting to cram the weakness back into the hole it crept from. Max still isn’t getting out of the car.

He swings away from the curb and loops back around the parking lot. If she wants to do this, fine, it’s his own fault for starting shit, but he’s not staying where a bunch of kids might see him. He sniffles and palms the side of his face, hot and ashamed and not knowing which way is up anymore. It’s not on purpose that he drives right by that spot Simmons showed him on Monday, but once he clocks it he knows that’s what he needs. A place to land and a chance to be still. He hangs a U-turn and parks on the shoulder.

“Why are we stopping here?”

“Took you to the arcade, you didn’t wanna go,” he mumbles, pulling the key and getting out of the car. He stalks up into the grass, caring not a bit how he does it but needing that stupid itchy grass in his hands.

Max stays in the car for a minute while he breathes and listens to the breeze catching in the trees. He’s gotta hand it to Simmons, it’s a nice spot. A little while later the car door opens and shuts, and Max approaches him, tentative, maybe not knowing if it’s okay to be close to him yet. He knows the feeling. None of this feels normal to him either.

“You’re gonna get grass stains,” she says, standing a ways off, testing the waters.

He looks down at himself and reorients until he can stretch his legs out in front of him. He dusts his hands over his knees, wincing. They’re not so bad. Hopefully that doesn’t get him a backhand later. He’s caught heat for less.

“Don’t know why you bother, Max,” he mutters.

“With what?”

“Taking care of me. Think I don’t notice?”

He looks over his shoulder at her. With him on his ass and her on her feet, she’s taller than him, but that’s not unusual. Max always carries herself like she’s ten feet tall. She’s so punk rock without even trying, and if they didn’t hate each other, he’d tell her. As big a heart as her dad has, he was never gonna have any other kind of kid. She crosses her arms over her chest, eyes suddenly very red and pointed at him.

“You’re really asking me that?” She stares at him, that hurt feeling twisting up to outrage the more time she gives him to take it back and he doesn’t. Her lip wobbles, but she doesn’t lose her nerve. She throws her hands out wide, like she’s calling for the surrounding woods to back her up. “There’s only so much ‘standing in his way’ you can do, but I can’t protect you when it’s the other way around?”

Did he say that? It’s all blurring together for him in one monolith of shit he wants to block out from his mind.

“You’re an asshole,” she says, but she tromps the last few paces over and sits next to him.

“Sorry.”

“For what, Billy? You keep saying that like I know what you mean, but I don’t. What are you sorry for?”

“For being a shitty brother. Stepbrother, whatever. For not knowing how to talk to you. For never trying.”

She scrubs her sleeve across her face. “More like, actively sabotaging yourself any chance you get. And anyone who ever tries to help you. Are you sorry for that?”

“Yeah, Max,” he says, a lot quieter, looking away from her. He misses whatever she says next and twists around to give her his better ear. “What’d you say?”

“I said, _your moods are so hard to predict._ ”

He rubs his face with his hands, sighing. “Yeah.”

They lapse into silence then. Not a single car passes them on the road. The only sound around for miles is the wind and the hum of insects. Max shuffles over to face him, but she doesn’t look up right away.

“Was that the first time you’ve talked to anyone about what happened?” Her face cracks open all over again at his silent nod. “Billy, why do you do this to yourself?”

“Do what?”

“We tried to help you — me and my dad — _and you lied!_ And for what? He didn’t deserve it! How could you protect him?”

“You think I was protecting him?” he asks, voice trembling, fear roiling deep within the center of him, from the same place where that scream lives. “What do you think happened to my mom when my dad’s cop buddies picked her up trying to leave him the first couple times, Max? Do you think they whisked us outta there and saved the day, or do you think they brought her right back to him for more of the same?”

She stares at him, trembling, either because she’s angry or because she’s upset. His money’s on angry.

“If I said something, and he got to come home after, what do you think that woulda looked like, Max? Think he woulda stopped at just me?”

Max wraps her arms around herself again, tighter, her bright eyes welling up with tears. The shaking gets worse, and she looks away, tears spilling over. He didn’t mean to do that, but he’s crying, too, so he’s not gonna be much help getting her to stop. It comes from such a deep place that it hollows him out by the time he feels like he’s gotten it all out of his system. He doesn’t know where that leaves Max. He’s never been as good at reading her as she is at reading him.

“I just want you to be safe. I know I’ve been coming at it from the wrong angle, and I’m s- I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I fucked it all up before. I’m sorry we’re stuck here in Bumfuck, Indiana.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Billy,” she says, wiping at her face again and sniffling. “You get that, right? It’s not your fault. It’s your dad’s.”

“I fuckin’ knew better,” he says, shaking his head.

“What were you supposed to know that would’ve stopped him?” she asks, in that patronizing, on-his-side tone he’s heard her get in these types of scenarios before. “And why is that your responsibility? He’s the adult. _He’s your dad._ He’s supposed to protect you, it’s literally in the job description, and on that note, not knowing any better is sorta what kids do best. It’s not your fault. Shut up.”

Billy sighs and opts to listen to the leaves shivering in the wind. It’s not something he’s ever paid much attention to before. He looks up at the wispy white clouds trundling along overhead and wraps his arms around his knees.

Max piles her hands in her lap. She’s not crying anymore. At least she’s got that going for her. “Are you gonna go back to being a jerk, or are you gonna keep being like this?”

“Like this?”

“Nice. Cool. Not a dick.”

He hasn’t given it much thought, but just the idea of things between them going back to how they’ve always been makes him feel so goddamn tired. He shrugs, saying, “I guess?”

“Then I forgive you, on one condition.”

“What’s that, Max?”

“I want you to tell my dad everything you just told me.”

“And if I don’t?” he asks, even though he already knows he’s gonna do it.

“Then I forgive you anyway because it’s what he’d want.”

He rolls his eyes. She’s right, though. He knows she’s right.

“He cares about you, Billy. He actually really honestly cares, and maybe that’s just bullshit to you, but he’s had your back every step of the way just like I have.”

“I’ll call him then.” He thinks back to that folded up slip of paper from the white pages and the entry he circled. There’s a phone booth back the way they came. He can come back down some weekend with a pocketful of quarters and make a morning of it. “I gotta make another call that way anyway.”

“Gene?” she asks.

“Nah, I burned that bridge. Just, someone else. A friend.”

“I didn’t know you had friends that weren’t Gene.” She stares at him, squinting. “Did you meet someone?”

Dread sinks in his stomach. Is he really that predictable, or is she just that smart? Probably a combination of the two. She’s definitely had his number for a while now. He just always did everything in his power to keep her from acting on it.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s just, you got a little better when you started hanging out with Gene, and then — he went away, and you got worse. But now it feels like you’re getting better again, and you actually mostly sound like a regular person for once. So did you?”

Billy squeezes his arms tighter around knees and shrugs. There’s no point not saying it around Max, so he says it. “Why? You wanna know if he’s nice to me?”

“Well, is he?”

Nice? Try perfect. Billy knows better than to believe that, and he knows he’s not perfect _or fucking nice_ , but he’s trying, and that’s a start at least. He clamps his fingers down over his knees and takes a deep breath.

“Yeah, he’s nice to me.”

She cracks a smile, just a small one, but she never smiles at him, not where he can see it. Like a promise, she says, “Okay. I won’t tell.”

It’s strange, how that makes him feel warm and grounded and like he can shoulder the rest of it without breaking. Max has always tried to be that for him, even when he’d gone and made up his mind that she shouldn’t. That nobody should.

“I won’t either.”

“Full disclosure, if this one hurts you, I _will_ hit him with my skateboard.”

“You know Gene never hurt me.”

“I bet you even believe that,” she says, frowning, blue eyes hard as steel, just like her spine. “Did you go see him that night when you took off?”

He paid Gene a visit, yeah, but not for the reason she probably thinks. He doesn’t want to tell her how he banged on the door until Gene stumbled outside half-dressed and mostly asleep. Doesn’t want to tell her how he shoved past him and went around smashing a bunch of his stuff to drive home the point that they were done.

It had felt like the only way, and he didn’t let himself stop for anything. Not when Gene cried just like Billy knew he would. Not when Billy screamed at him and they both cried.

He must’ve thought to himself a hundred times, _It’s not his fault this happened, I don’t blame him, I don’t want this to be the end,_ but all those words in his heart trying to claw their way out weren’t big enough. Billy wasn’t strong enough to tell him, even once, _You’re all I have._

Instead he said, _Stay the hell away from me._

And it had felt —

Well, it had felt like being transported to that afternoon on the beach when the crumpled up beer can of his body sank to the bottom of the ocean, like waking up in the hospital and feeling the shame, agony, and regret sink in, like dying.

“Billy, what did you do?”

Broke a decent guy’s heart, that’s what he did. He rubs at his eye again and clears his throat. “Ended it.”

Max watches him for a second, maybe remembering how Billy came home late reeking of booze with tears and snot all over his face. She bounces her knees a few times like a butterfly flapping its wings and says, “I was mean to him, too. I wish I’d been nicer.”

Billy blinks back the stinging in his eyes. “So do I.”

“This is gonna sound weird and you’re gonna hate it, but he could’ve been nicer to you, too.”

“Max — ”

She reaches across his front to hold up his wrist for inspection, checking his watch for the time. “Can we drive around a bit before we head back?”

“Yeah,” he answers readily, grateful for the subject change. “Where do you wanna go?”

“Just around.”

“All right. C’mon.”

They head back, and when he starts the car, she asks him one of his least favorite ambiguous questions: “Don’t you think?”

“What’d you say?”

Max glances up at him, eyebrows twitching while her mind works. “I said, it feels like we’re in that movie, _The Thing_. Don’t you think?”

“I kinda figured _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_.”

She nods, but she’s still looking at him weird. She covers her mouth with her hand, and — he doesn’t get whatever she says behind her hand. He rolls his eyes, trying desperately to ignore the slamming of his heart. He squeezes the wheel in his hands and gets them back on the road, back teeth aching for how tight he’s holding his jaw.

Raising her voice just enough to be heard easily over the rumbling tires, she says, “You couldn’t hear me, could you? Has it always been like that? Or just…”

He should’ve known she’d put it together on a long enough timeline, and now that she knows, she’ll never let it go. She keeps staring at him, keeps waiting for him to spill all his secrets now that that’s apparently a thing he fucking does. He heaves a sigh.

“Just since.”

“Have you been to a doctor? Maybe you could get a hearing aid or something.”

“It’s not that bad. Leave it alone.”

“Billy — ”

“The day my dad sees one of those things in my ear, he’d just as soon fucking smash it, Max.”

“He’d do that? I know he’s an asshole, _but you_ _can’t fucking hear_.”

There’s her fight. She has all the fearlessness of a wild goddamn tiger when she gets up in arms about something. Her tiny voice and big blue eyes always remind him more of a kitten, but hell, even tigers are small, once.

“Never stopped him deckin’ my mom six ways to Sunday.”

“She couldn’t hear at all?”

He bites his cheek. “On and off toward the end, I dunno.”

“What was she like?”

Billy doesn’t know. He’s never been much of an authority on his mom. She left when he was younger than Max, at a time when all he could really understand about her was that he loved her more than anyone in the world. Ten years later, that’s still true. It might be the truest thing about him.

He knows she liked the beach, or maybe they only went all the time because he did. Come to think of it, he never saw her get in the water. She only ever just watched him or the point where the sky and the ocean met over the horizon. There’s not much else to his memories of her. Most days he’s lucky if he can remember what her voice sounded like. Sometimes he dreams about her, but she never stays. She’s always young and beautiful and bright when he thinks of her, and it would be so easy to remember her the other way, as battered or afraid or far away, but she always feels close in his dreams. Like a sigh of relief or a warm touch or a clock he can synch up to his heartbeat.

 _She was weak_ , a voice in the back of his mind says. _She left. She didn’t love me. She was —_

“Sweet. She was sweet.”

“Do you ever talk to her?”

Billy shakes his head. He doesn’t know where she is or if she’s alive, and he has no idea if she ever tried to get in contact with him after the last time. She’s never gonna find him now if she couldn’t then, though. He knows that.

“That sucks.”

“Just how it is.” After a while passes in silence, he looks over at her. “What’s with the face, Max?”

“Have you ever looked her up? Maybe she tried to find you before but couldn’t. Maybe we could try to find her. Hawkins is tiny, but they’ve got a library at least and computers.”

A hot flush of shame hits him hard like a wave, sudden and brutal. “I don’t… ”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“She’s not — Hargrove’s not her name anymore.”

“Her maiden name then,” Max says, not getting it, and God, this is actually the worst. No, wait, the stuttered moment when it finally sinks in what he’s not telling her, that’s the worst. “Oh. Okay, well, that’s… trickier.”

“Wouldn’t worry about it, Max,” he tells her in a wooden kind of voice. “Told you. ’S just how it is.”

“Do you miss her?”

His watch beeps, and he toggles the little button to shut it up before pulling the car back around in the direction of home. He drives for a minute, thinking, remembering, and says, “Yeah.”

“You can’t ask your dad about her?”

A bitter smile cuts into his mouth, twisting more into a grimace the longer that it lives there. He tried once and caught a fist in the gut for being curious. “No, I can’t, and neither can you. Promise me you won’t go stirring shit up.”

“I promise not to stir shit up,” she repeats blandly.

He narrows his eyes at her, suspicious. “You better not be phrasing it like that so you can worm out of it through a loophole later.”

“I won’t do anything, Billy, jeez.”

“I’m not playing around, Max.”

“I know you aren’t! I’m not either! I just hate this.”

“What about it?”

“You’re actually _literally_ the unhappiest person I know. Are you aware of that fact?”

He rolls his eyes, grumbling, “See me making an effort here?”

“Yeah, actually, I did see that, but you could stand to loosen up. A lot. I mean, baby steps just to start.” She holds up her fingers to indicate either a grain of sand or the world’s tiniest violin. “Loosen up _this much?_ Just to get used to the idea of relaxing _for real_ someday? Wow, Billy, think of how much better you’d feel! You might even smile every now and then!”

She’d fit in so well with the girls in his class. It’s comical.

He pulls onto their street and parks on the curb, killing the engine. Max pauses to look at him before getting out of the car. He doesn’t know how long it’ll take for this thing between them to feel normal, but the calm look on her face feels like a pretty decent place to start.

“Thanks, Billy,” she says, and bolts to the house before he can respond.

“Not bad, Hargrove,” he mumbles under his breath. “For a disaster.”

He pockets his keys and gets out of the car, wondering how tough it’s gonna be securing permission to take off before dinner. As long as he doesn’t fuck around with the details too much, his dad might not mind if Billy bails to make a date. All he has to do is ask. If he’s lucky there won’t even be any follow-up questions about where he’s going and who he’s going to see when he gets there.

His dad’s in front of the TV in the living room, alone. Without turning, he says, “Something you want?”

“Yes, sir. Is it all right if I leave to make a date?”

“Same girl you told me about, or a different one?”

Billy doesn’t even know why he bothered. Simmons turned out to be decent, but he didn’t take her out so they could be friends. He took her out so he could get some traction at school as a guy who definitely kisses girls, for whatever the fuck that even matters anymore. It didn’t count for shit back home, and he hasn’t been able to convince himself that rebuilding that flimsy fortress of bullshit from scratch would be worth the effort. He thought he had it in him to do it again, but it’s becoming more and more obvious that he doesn’t.

“Same girl,” he says, because there’s no other correct answer. “Katie.”

His dad’s looking at him then, squinting at something he sees in Billy’s face. Whatever it is, he just turns back to the TV and waves his hand, muttering, “You been crying?”

Billy flinches. He nearly goes to touch his face and forces his hands not to move. He keeps his eyes down and his voice soft. Whenever he’s not afraid of the storm it’ll bring, he’ll run his mouth on purpose, but coming out of this unscathed feels important. He wouldn’t give a shit if it was only gonna be him seeing the welts raised on his skin afterwards, but he doesn't want Harrington to see that shit on him.

“Is it okay if I go?”

“It’s a school night,” his dad says, and Billy’s heart sinks. “And on the topic of school, I got an interesting call from your Shop teacher earlier. You wanna tell me why you weren’t in class? Maybe it’s because it’s so easy. That must be it.”

He stands up, and there goes the bottom of Billy’s stomach, right through the floor. He starts backing away before he knows he’s doing it.

“I’m sure if someone were to take a bat to that car you love so much, you’d know how to fix it up good as new, wouldn’t you? Is that what you’re telling me?” He grabs Billy’s arm hard, and Billy staggers into the wall under it. The cool, flat look in his eyes simmers, contemptuous and hungry for this chance to twist the knife on his humiliation. “Why don’t I dig up my nine-iron and we’ll see how much you know about cars, Billy, huh? Do you want that?”

“No — ”

“No, you don’t. Because we both know you didn’t fix that car by yourself, don’t we? You had your little fairy boyfriend do all the heavy lifting for you. Is that what’s happening now?”

_“No, Dad — ”_

That gets him a smack across the cheek.

“Interrupt me again.”

Sometimes his dad does this. Gives Billy a reason to give him a reason, and whether he gets worse than just a slap is up to him. Billy stays quiet and keeps his eyes down. The same thing he’d do to keep a wild dog from attacking.

“Now, the very next time you think about cutting class, I want you to remember this conversation. I want you to remember that you’re not half as clever as you think you are and that you’ve got plenty left that I can still take away. Do you believe that?” He waits for Billy’s nod and says, “You know what I want to hear.”

“I’m not half as clever as I think,” Billy echoes, hollow and cold all over, “and I’ve got plenty of stuff you can still take away. Sir.”

“Good.” He pats Billy’s stinging cheek and lets him go. “What you’re gonna do is call this Katie girl and tell her you can’t make your date, and if I like your attitude better at dinner, you can make it up to her tomorrow.”

He lets Billy go and watches him walk out into the kitchen to the wall phone. For fuck’s sake. At least he sits back down in his chair, but Billy hears the chatter on the TV cut out so he can listen in.

Billy’s lucky he even has her number. He punches it out by memory, muttering the whole time to keep himself from noticing the tremor creeping into his hands. It occurs to him to just pretend to call, but it’d be just his luck if his dad came over and took the phone out of his hand to call his bluff. Simmons is all right. She’ll be confused, but she’ll get over it.

The phone rings, and he gets a kid’s voice. Surprise cuts through the panic rising in his throat like bile. He squints, trying to remember if he knows her name. Simmons said it, he’s pretty sure. Was it May or Mandy? Misty? It slots into place.

“Am I talkin’ to Maisie?”

The little voice on the other end gasps, and then, _“How do you know my name? I mean — you might be.”_ There’s a frantic pause and then, more aggressively, _“Who wants to know?”_

“My name’s Billy,” he says, eyebrows climbing higher on his forehead. “I go to school with your sister.”

Instantly her tone brightens. _“Oh! Katie’s friend! Did you really show her how to throw a punch? Could you show me? I have a lot of enemies — ”_

 _“You’re ten,”_ an older voice says, taking the phone from her. _“Billy? Is that you?”_

“Katie, yeah, hi.” He glances over his shoulder, and his dad’s on his feet again, leaning against the doorframe to the kitchen, watching. Billy clears his throat and turns back to the counter. “Hey, sorry to call on such short notice.”

_“That’s okay. What’s going on?”_

“Uh, you know that spot you were tellin’ me about? With the fireflies and the stars and everything.”

_“Yeah, of course. Did you want directions?”_

“No, I know we talked about it already,” he says, trying to balance what she’s hearing with what his dad’s hearing. What a fucking joke. He owes her lunch after this, at the very least. “Look, something came up and we’re not gonna be able to do that tonight after all.”

_“I wasn’t aware we’d made plans to do that, but thank you for calling?”_

“Sure, I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

_“You better, and don’t go getting any funny ideas about ditching me in Shop again. We’re supposed to be partners, remember?”_

“I remember. I won’t let you down, okay?”

_“Okay. Bye, Billy.”_

His dad’s gone by the time he hangs up the phone. Must’ve gotten bored when it started to sink in that Billy didn’t make up a girl just to sneak around. Not entirely, anyway.

He rubs absently at his cheek and goes to his room, fully intending to skip dinner. At least his dad won’t be able to say he didn’t like his attitude, and that means he won’t have a reason to keep Billy home tomorrow. He better not.

‘Cuz the thing is, right? Getting raked over the coals all the goddamn time sort of distorts reality after a while. To the point where it really does get harder to tell what’s scarier, the threat of pain or the straitjacket of living cautiously. He tried playing it safe and his paper life went up in smoke over a kiss, so is there even any point in keeping up the lie anymore? Didn’t take then, it’s not gonna take now.

Billy’s always been pretty fucking sure that people are never any more or less than exactly themselves. Believing that has never given him much relief, but now, he’s wondering if maybe it should. It makes the inevitability of seeing Harrington tomorrow feel — rather than ugly or wrong or bad — _right._

Because people don’t change. How he feels isn’t going to change, no matter how hard his dad hits him. That part of Billy’s never gonna go away. He doesn’t want it to.

So he might as well fucking do it up.

* * *

Back in Ms. Carter’s class the next day, he’s one of five people to recite his poem from memory. He doesn’t miss a single word, and there’s something about it that draws him into it. Whatever it is makes him good at drawing _everyone else_ into it, too. Part of it’s that he knows exactly how to command attention when he wants it, but the other part of it’s just that it’s fun to slip behind the mask on purpose. There’s an honesty in it that’s effortless, natural.

People clap and Ms. Carter beams, and Harrington’s watching him like he’s got magnets in his eyes calibrated to follow Billy wherever he goes. Billy’s satisfaction is molten in his belly.

He tears off half a sheet of paper from his notebook, writes a word, and folds it twice as the bell’s ringing. With all his shit tucked up under one arm, he saunters over to Harrington’s desk and kicks one of the legs so it jars him where he’s sitting. He looks up, startled, and covers the note with his hand when Billy drops it on his desk.

Billy turns on his heel and walks to the door before he looks back at his handiwork. Harrington unfolds the note and looks up, blushing already, and nods.

It’s going down tonight. Fuck yeah.

* * *

Finishing out the rest of the afternoon ends up being a lot more involved than he thought it’d be. He’s playing catch-up in Shop, he has to hang back to talk to Ms. Carter for real, and by the time he’s running Max home from the arcade, he’s got tutorial pages from Greenbriar, blank application forms, personal essay templates he’s supposed to study, and a monologue out of Hamlet Ms. Carter gave him _just for fun_.

Yeah, he doesn’t know how she managed to say that with a straight face. She also wants to set him up with a study partner from her AP class, a Robin Something. Barkley? Buckley. Robin Buckley. So that’s. Happening.

“Why do you have so much homework?” Max asks, reaching for the papers strewn over the floor in front of her seat. She holds a packet in front of her face. “College applications! Billy, this is so cool. Where are you applying?”

“Don’t know yet,” he mumbles. The idea’s still so surreal to him.

 _“O, that this too solid flesh would melt!”_ she reads from a different packet, already distracted. In her regular voice, she asks, “Is this another memorization thing? Because you weren’t very subtle about learning the other one. How’d that go anyway?”

“Nailed it. Supposed to be for fun, apparently.”

She looks at him, incredulous, and goes back to the monologue, reading: _“Frailty, thy name is —_ are you kidding me? _Women_ are frail? Is this guy serious?”

Billy shrugs. He’d read through it a few times waiting for her to get out to the car. “Guess he’s pissed at his mom for moving on from his dad. Can’t relate.”

“You’re not really doing this for fun, are you?”

“A teacher gave it to me. The applications, too.”

“Are you gonna tell your dad?” She watches him and nods when he shakes his head, glancing around and shuffling all his shit back together. “You need a backpack, Billy.”

“Been doing fine without.”

“Well, you’re gonna need one in college. A backpack and different colored pens and sticky tabs to take notes and — ooh, Billy, we need to get you a skateboard.”

He doesn’t know how she can mean it so much when she says she forgives him, and not just that, but to settle into this new dynamic like a duck taking to water. It’s always been so easy for her to put things behind her. She still watches him too closely, trying to be careful with him, trying not to tip him too far in any one direction, but it’s — better between them. Nicer.

“Would you wanna go back to California for school or someplace completely different? You could go to Harvard and tell your dad to eat a dick.”

_“Max!”_

“You’re right, Harvard’s expensive and way too prissy.”

“Oh, my God, you’re gonna get me in trouble.”

“No, I won’t! I’m sorry, I just… kind of missed this.”

“Missed what?” He turns onto their street, already thinking ahead to whether he wants to head straight to Harrington’s after he drops her off or if it’s worth it to freshen up first. His hair’s probably gone flat since this morning. “Bitching about my dad?”

“Yeah. It used to be the only time we ever talked, before.”

He parks in front of the house and looks at her, something stirring in his chest at the visible lapse in her confidence. She’s so strong for him always, and obviously she wants this truce to hold.

“Tell you what, next time my dad’s outta the house or if you end up needing a ride somewhere, we’ll talk. School, Shakespeare, whatever you want. All right?”

“Whatever I want?” she asks, eyes lighting up.

“Go easy on me, Jesus.”

“Killjoy,” she teases, smiling a little easier. “Are you not coming?”

“Nah, I’m — got a date.”

She shuts her door and looks at him, more of that spark dancing in her eyes. “With…?”

“Yeah, but if my dad asks,” he adds, sighing.

“Katie Simmons. Pretty redhead from Shop class.” She rolls her eyes at the look he gives her. “I pay attention, Billy. You’re gonna go wearing that?”

“I don’t have anything else, Max.”

“But you wore that to school. You don’t have anything a little nicer?”

He has his red shirt, but that’s what he wears when he’s going out to be seen. “Not really.”

“Tragic.”

“Wow, Max, why don’t you tell me what you really think?”

 _“Tragic,”_ she repeats, raising her eyebrows for emphasis.

Billy sighs and opens his door. Max jogs ahead of him into the house. He crosses the threshold and hears her call out.

“Anybody home?” She trots over from the back window in the answering silence and follows him into the hallway. “You should wear one of your white thermals. They make you look soft.”

He leans against the doorframe to his room, watching her root through his shit as if smack in the middle of all his earthly possessions is right where she belongs. Like it’s exciting for her not to be pushed away for once, and that’s probably true. Billy’s never actually seen her with anyone but that Lucas kid, and she always was more her dad’s kid than Susan’s daughter. He folds his arms over his chest.

“You’re not havin’ trouble makin’ friends, are you?”

Max holds up two shirts, sets one down, and digs out another. She says, “No, why? Are you?”

He thinks about Tommy parading him around the Halloween party like a show pony, a crowd of people drawn in like flies for that stupid keg stand. That’s how it was back home, and he hadn’t much expected things here to be any different. Sure as shit didn’t think he’d be giving all that up to spend his lunches with a grease monkey and a nerdy cheerleader. Didn’t think he’d be noticeably happier for it either, but Simmons is sweet and Nomura’s hilarious, and he doesn’t feel the need to pretend with them. It makes him realize just how much of his life he’s been acting, playing the part just to fit in. It’s exhausting.

“Billy? Is that a yes?”

“What? I dunno. Not anymore.”

“Awesome.” She tosses a shirt at him. “Wear that one. Also you might wanna spruce up your hair a bit before you go. Have fun!”

A little bewildered at this turn of events, he lets her pass into the hall and shuts his door to get changed. He preens a bit in the mirror once he’s done, tucks his shirt in so it clings a little to his abs, and pops his necklace out over the collar to make hard eye contact with Saint Christopher.

“Patron saint of bachelors, right?” he murmurs, giving the pendant a little flick before he shrugs his jacket back on over the top. He heads out into the hallway, calling out, “I’m goin’, Max. Lock up behind me.”

“Bye, Billy!”

* * *

He spends the drive to Harrington’s with the windows down and the radio on so he can hum along. He doesn’t feel nervous at all, but the anticipation’s killing him. Feels like it’s been longer than just a week since he got to kiss Steve Harrington. He’s itching to get his hands on him again.

By the time pulls up outside the house and parks exactly where he did last Friday night, there’s still plenty of daylight. The maroon BMW sitting in the driveway is the only other car around for miles.

He crosses the lawn to the front door and rings the bell. The windows had all been dark on Halloween, but now he can’t tell if the house is empty or full. It sounds just as quiet as it did that night, but then he hears footsteps and the door’s swinging open, and there’s Harrington in the same clothes he wore to school, minus his shoes. Billy gives him a slow once-over, and the warm, sly look on Harrington’s face at the end of it makes Billy feel loose and hot and untethered.

“Hey, Billy,” he breathes, smiling.

Billy smiles back and keeps it sharp at the edges. Purrs, “Pretty boy.”

Harrington bites his lip and steps forward, leaning into the doorframe the same as Billy. He’s close enough to touch, but Billy holds himself still. His skin’s buzzing and he wants to drag it out for as long as he can, until he’s crazy with it. Until Harrington is, too.

“So, dinner?” Harrington asks, raising his eyebrows hopefully.

Billy makes a show of looking at the early afternoon behind him. By the time he glances back at Harrington, they’ve shaved off at least an inch of the space that was separating them, and fuck, Billy wants him closer. He bites his lip, too, eyes dropping to Harrington’s throat when he swallows and muses, “Kinda early.”

“Good point,” Harrington agrees, flashing that smile that makes Billy weak.

He catches a handful of Billy’s shirt in his hand and pulls him into the house. Billy shoulders the door closed, leaning back against it in one long, curving line. He expects Harrington to falter for not knowing what to do with him, but he doesn’t fuck around. He steps in close and smooths his hand over Billy’s stomach.

“Why’d you change your mind?”

Billy didn’t change his mind, actually. He was never gonna not do this, but he can’t fucking say that.

“Wanted to do this again,” he croons instead, slipping his hand around the back of Harrington’s neck, and fuck, there’s something here that he’s wanted forever. As cool as he’s trying to play it, Billy shivers hard in Harrington’s hands, and he knows — he just knows — he feels it.

“Easy,” Harrington whispers, and goddamn. Goddamn.

From the first touch of his lips a week ago, Billy’s been gone on Steve Harrington. He’s always been the type to fall feet first into wanting someone, but all this waiting and yearning and mourning what could never be, makes having it now feel almost like a vivid daydream.

Harrington leans in the rest of the way to slot their mouths together, slow, careful, wondering. Billy’s eyes drift shut, falling fast and hard for him all over again, sloppy drunk in an instant. Carried away.

Billy wraps an arm around his shoulders to crush him closer, face burning at the soft, sweet noise Harrington makes. He sighs Billy’s name like a goddamn revelation, like he can’t believe how good this feels either. The slow rocking of his hips gets Billy grinding up into him in a smooth, burning counterpoint that builds, getting faster and more hectic the messier the kisses land, the harder their hands grip and squeeze and pull, the harder it is to draw breath. It feels like sex already, and they haven’t even gotten out of the fucking doorway yet.

Harrington bends to suck a row of kisses down Billy’s neck. God, he’s hard, and so’s Harrington. Billy can feel the outline of him trapped in his jeans. His head thunks back into the door, wanting him, wanting him so bad he could go to his knees right now and consider it a favor to both of them.

“What do you think?” Harrington murmurs, pulling away.

Muzzy, Billy blinks and blurts out, “’Bout what?” He badly wants to keep kissing him, so he does, right on his grinning mouth, and bites him for good measure. “Little fucking distracted here, _Steve_.”

“I said, let’s go to my room.”

“Sure you don’t wanna do it here?” Billy teases, palming Harrington through his jeans and delighting in the blustery sigh it wins him. He presses his tongue against the point of one tooth, thrilling at Harrington's shiver and at the manacle he makes around Billy’s wrist. Kneading at him, he adds, gently, “Take the edge off.”

The heated look Harrington gives him could probably start a fire. He reaches down to slide his hand from Billy’s wrist down to his fingers, pressing down where they both want. Billy’s skin goes hot all over, and then Harrington’s tongue is in his mouth and he can’t think. He slips against the door, thrilling at the hands holding him up. His body’s a house made of sticks and it’s just Harrington keeping his ass off the floor, both of them swaying and gasping and caught in the tide together. Harrington runs his hands all the way down Billy’s back until his palms slide home in his pockets. When he pulls back, his face is flushed and his eyes are hazy.

“You keep trying to knock me on my ass, I’m gonna knock you on yours.”

Billy laughs, startled and caught completely like a rabbit in a snare. Harrington shakes his head, smirking, and leans in close to kiss the edge of Billy’s mouth, then his jaw, and then a spot on Billy’s neck where his pulse is racing like crazy. He runs his hands up Billy’s back under his shirt. Between the smooth slide of skin on skin and the hot touch of his tongue, Billy’s just about lost. He bumps Harrington’s head with his own, and then he’s turning to fit their mouths together again, _and_ _goddamn, that’s good._ He could kiss Harrington for an hour and not get bored.

Hungry for him, Billy whispers, incandescent, “Let’s go to your room then.”

Harrington spares him the jokes. They nearly trip over each other racing up the stairs, and never once does Harrington let go of his hand. It’s stupid that Billy even notices and outright dangerous to think it matters. No matter what Harrington said about his jacket or about taking him out on a date or wanting to know him, Billy can’t let himself think about that. Not if he might risk hoping for something that’ll just never happen. He can’t. Not again.

They crash into a bedroom at the end of the hall, and Billy would know it was Harrington’s even if he hadn’t all but kicked in the door dragging Billy into it. The blue flannel bed set, the maroon backpack at the foot of the dresser, the shoes kicked across the floor, one of them upright and the other on its side, the faint traces of whatever cologne he probably steals from his dad — it’s stupid that he notices. Dangerous to take one look at the setup and the suggestions of personality and all the natural daylight streaming in through the flung open windows, endless trees beyond, and think, _This is about what I expected_.

Harrington loops an arm around Billy’s neck and kisses all his observations into obscurity. He walks them backward toward the bed, thumps his foot on a textbook, and laughs breathlessly when Billy stops him from falling.

“You’re the least coordinated person I’ve ever met,” Billy mumbles, but he goes easily enough when Harrington wheels around on him and nudges him to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Always gets you to come in close, though, doesn’t it?” Harrington coos, climbing on top of him as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Like you can’t help it.”

He pushes Billy down onto the bed, and as if in demonstration, swoops down to kiss him, deep but fleeting, gone just as soon as it started to simmer. Harrington sits up again, triumphant and almost seeming to shine with it. Billy’s in a cloud, warm all over and drinking him in while his hands push Billy’s shirt up to bare his stomach. Billy does the same for him from behind, hands roving the expanse of Harrington’s back beneath his shirt and feeling the grooves between his ribs with each pass.

Harrington bends down to mouth at Billy’s abs and then higher up, coaxing him to wriggle further onto the bed and settling in between his legs. He flicks his tongue against Billy’s nipple and sucks at the gasp it earns him. Heat unspools low in Billy’s belly, warming him all over just like the bright red flush burning in Harrington’s skin. Billy gets a hand in Harrington’s hair to draw him back in for a kiss and snakes his other hand down to open his pants. Harrington groans at the contact, voice rising a whole octave once Billy’s got him firmly in hand. He sounds fucking gorgeous like this, and Billy’s not even doing anything.

 _“Billy!_ Billy, oh…”

“Yeah?” Billy grins against Harrington’s cheek and gives him a twist, sighing sweetly against his open mouth. He flicks his tongue against his upper lip and squeezes him. “Like that?”

Harrington scrabbles for Billy’s fly, gasping, “Yeah, Billy. Yeah.”

Billy tenses up and then goes lax all over at Harrington’s hand on him. He’s on the wet side already, so Harrington’s hand goes smoothly, and so does his dick when it slips against Billy’s in a flash of sweet, lush heat. Harrington topples off sideways and takes Billy along with him, keeping one leg wrapped around Billy’s hip so they’re facing each other. He keeps working him over with his hand, skimming Billy’s dick with his a few times on accident before he starts doing it on purpose. It feels so good, Billy could just about burst out of his fucking skin.

They’re past talking now. Past anything that’s not just moving and breathing and touching everywhere that they can, chasing the same high that builds into a crash.

Harrington gets his first. He groans hot and loud into Billy’s throat and shoots his load all over Billy’s hand, trembling for a moment before dropping into stillness. Billy eases off, still holding him in his hand but letting him Harrington his glow even though his own body’s still drawn so tight wanting more. Would’ve been nice to go down on him before he came, but Billy’s learned by now how important it is to be safe about this, and he’s not gonna let Harrington be stupid about it either.

Right now he’s thinking predominantly with his dick, though, so he figures a little bit of stupid is to be expected. He brushes his lips against Harrington’s temple and without thinking too much about what he’s surrendering by admitting it, says, “I wanna blow you next time.”

Harrington turns his head so he can look up at Billy with his hair mashed into the pillow. The sleepy, sated set to his face sharpens with interest. He mumbles, “Have you done that before?”

“Yeah, I have,” he says, taking his hand off Harrington’s dick and wrapping it around his hand instead.

Like he’s shy suddenly, as if it means something different for him to be touching Billy when Billy’s not touching him, Harrington’s slow to move, even with Billy’s hand covering his. He licks his lips and twists his wrist, eyes jumping up from their hands to Billy’s face when his breath catches in his throat. In a whisper, he says, “Good?”

“Yeah, Harrington.”

He nods, eyes hooded, and twists his wrist again. Billy’s mouth drops open around a gasp, and when Harrington dips his tongue between his lips, it becomes a moan. He licks the underside of Harrington’s tongue, and Harrington starts working his fist over Billy like it’s his fucking job. Billy was close anyway, but that takes him right back to the edge in a heartbeat. He sighs into Harrington’s mouth and lets go of his hand to rake his nails over his back instead, eyes shut tight while the tangle in the pit of his stomach ignites.

Billy goes off in Harrington’s hand and tries to come down from it, but his breath won’t be caught and his skin won’t be still. The blood roars in his ears.

“Fuck, Billy.”

He makes a vague sound of agreement, gone all loose and pliant in Harrington’s arms. When he opens his eyes, Harrington’s puffy, spit-slick lips have a look like berries waiting to be picked, and Billy’s good for it. He cranes his neck, and that one more kiss becomes two becomes three becomes more. Harrington’s hand sneaks in to hold his cheek before slipping back into his hair, then in the hollow of his neck where it comes to rest like an anchor. Stupid to notice how perfectly his hand fits there. Dangerous to like it, but maybe not. Maybe not.

They lie there for a while not talking, wrapped up in each other with only the sound of their hearts beating to fill the quiet. Billy joked before about taking the edge off, but the loss of that heat and urgency kind of just lets him appreciate the after. He never used to get this with Gene. Not the handsy, aimless closeness or the sloppy, indulgent kisses or the peaceful, floating laziness. It feels good to just enjoy it.

It doesn’t last. His jeans are shoved halfway down his thighs, and he’s sweating through his shirt and jacket. Harrington’s in the same boat as he is, but that doesn’t make it any less ridiculous. Billy didn’t even take off his fucking shoes, and that’s just plain embarrassing.

“So my original plan if you said yes,” Harrington slurs, halfway to dignity but missing the mark for how stripped raw his voice sounds, “was gonna be _Pauline’s,_ but I don’t think I’m going anywhere after that, so I dunno, does pizza sound okay?”

Billy shifts over onto his back. He’s maybe a little careful not to dislodge Harrington’s hand, so instead of pulling away, it just slips around to the base of Billy’s throat, fingers splayed across his collar bone. Billy rubs at his forehead with the heel of his hand, trying desperately not to care and not to be stupidly turned on by Harrington’s sexy fucking rasp. It’s an uphill battle.

“You don’t have to wine and dine me, Harrington.”

The smug little smirk on Harrington’s face tells him he likes the way Billy sounds, too. “I’d like to anyway. How else’m I gonna get you in my jacket by the end of the year?”

“Oh, my God,” Billy groans, not really meaning it. “Again with this?”

“Well, yeah,” Harrington muses, pulling his jeans back up and straddling Billy’s stomach. He’s careful to avoid the wet spot they left on the bedspread, and he even helps Billy yank his jeans up, too, so he won’t look like an asshole with his dick out. “It’s part of my big epic plan to win your heart. How’m I doing so far?”

Billy scoffs and struggles to get his jacket off so he won’t have to look at the fuckin’ knockout sitting on his stomach. Unfazed, Harrington just reaches for him and helps him get the sleeves down his arms. Once liberated, Billy doesn’t have an out from the question, so they just stare at each other with their jeans undone and the door hanging wide open over Harrington’s shoulder. No one else is in this huge-ass house with them, but it unsettles him still, the thought that someone could walk in at any moment. He shakes his head, nausea surging in him, and looks away.

He’s gotten this far on need and pettiness, but he’s got nothing left to keep the wind in his sails unless he tries his hand at the truth again. It worked with Max, didn’t it? Fuck.

“’S not gonna be what you want,” Billy mutters, still not meeting his eyes.

Harrington hums in place of asking what Billy means, and it’s harder that way. It means it’s all on Billy and whatever he chooses to make of it. There’s nothing to twist up with Harrington. His eyes are too open and honest, and the shit he says back to Billy is more of the same. Billy doesn’t get it. _He_ _doesn’t_ _understand_.

In a smaller voice than he likes, Billy tells him, “No one’s gonna just let this happen.”

Harrington reaches for Billy’s hands and places them about halfway up his thighs, like he knows Billy will touch him all on his own if he’s left with the option, and he does. It’ll only make it hurt worse when he inevitably has to pull away, but Harrington’s so warm, and Billy loves the feel of him. Loves that he’s solid and sturdy and still just watching him with a soulful look on his face like he wants more than anything to put Billy at ease.

“Why does anyone outside this room have a say in whether it happens or not?”

“Steve — ”

“Nobody else’s opinion matters but ours, and we want this, so why wouldn’t we try?”

“Because I’m not some chick! Don’t act like you don’t fucking get that!”

“That’s really not what I’m struggling with here.”

“Then what?”

“Will you look at me, please? Thank you.”

He kisses Billy, and just keeps right the hell on kissing him. One of his hands eases down Billy’s jaw and the other one perches over his heart. He kisses Billy until they’re both good and breathless with it, and Billy can’t even open his eyes. Like he can’t get enough — and Billy gets it, that’s where he is, too — he kisses Billy one more time for good measure, lingering and sweet and burning. Billy buries a hand in his hair and keeps him there, not ready to be done either.

Harrington melts. Fuck, he feels good.

A good while later, Harrington sighs and pulls away, dropping his head onto Billy’s shoulder for a second to catch his breath. Billy drops his head back, overwhelmed. Done in by a fucking kiss.

“Obviously you’re not a chick, Billy,” he mumbles into Billy’s shirt. “I’m really into you not being a chick. Did grabbing your dick really not drive that point home for you? Because I can grab it again if that’ll help clear things up.”

Billy rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t get as far as the bitchy comeback he had on the tip of his tongue because Harrington kisses him. Maybe for emphasis, but also maybe because he can’t help it, and still, yeah, Billy gets it. He won’t be deterred from his line of questioning, though, and as much as Billy wishes he wouldn’t think to ask about shit that’s not so easy to answer, he kind of has to admire his persistence.

Sitting up, probably so he won’t get distracted again, he says, “Do you just not wanna go out with me? Because it’s cool if you don’t.”

“No, I…”

Billy presses his lips together. He feels so stupid trying to say it. He doesn’t know how Harrington makes it sound so goddamn run-of-the-mill. Like he’s talking about the weather and not — _not…_

Harrington raises his eyebrows in question, but he doesn’t interrupt.

That crying feeling flares in Billy’s throat again. He looks away. “I want to.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Billy legitimately wants to know what it feels like to live in Steve Harrington’s head. He wants to know how he could laugh in Billy’s face on Halloween and keep pushing him even when it just made Billy meaner and meaner, how he could go after him like it didn’t matter what he got for his trouble so long as it left a mark. He’s doing the same thing now, except it means something this time. Billy can tell it does because he’s holding onto Billy and asking for the truth when it would be so much easier to slip from Billy’s hands like smoke and call it a day.

Burning up like the fucking brushfire he’s always been would be easier, too. Easier than having to say it. Any of it. Because how does he even begin to explain the problem without getting into his scars or the fact that no one in Billy’s life has called him a fag more than his dad? Where would he even start?

Harrington turns his chin with just a graze of his finger. “Billy? You okay?”

Billy wraps his hands around Harrington’s hips and looks up at him. The light coming in through the window paints him all over in burnt orange and catches golden in his eyes, reminding Billy of home back when it really felt like a home. The beach, the endless sky, his mom.

Sunsets were her favorite. They couldn’t stay and watch all that often, but every once in a while if Dad was working late or out drinking, they’d be there when the pink in the sky gave way to blue, then purple, then black. Billy would be running with his surfboard, laughing, and she’d have her eyes on him or on the horizon, well beyond the point that anything but the moon and its reflection of scattered diamonds could be seen. He blinks the memory away, and there’s Harrington, watching him. All warmth and wonder.

Billy can’t believe he’s doing this again, but it worked with Max, didn’t it? The sky didn’t fall, and it’s not gonna come crashing down now either. He takes a breath to steady himself and shuts his eyes when the air in his lungs starts to feel like rising water.

It’s okay.

No one knows they’re here. He’s not gonna get hurt again. Not right this minute, not with Harrington and a whole goddamn house in between him and the rest of the world. There’s no reason to get upset. No reason to shake apart. It’s okay.

He did it once already. He can do it again. It’s okay.

“My dad would kill me,” he breathes, opening his eyes, “if he ever saw me wearing your jacket.”

Kind eyes flickering with uncertainty, voice pitching low, Harrington says, “Yeah?”

Billy can’t say it, but he’s not satisfied with giving him nothing. He takes Harrington’s hand and guides the pad of his finger along the ridge of his cheekbone where the skin’s uneven, feeling it when Harrington runs his finger more purposefully over his scar. A rash of goosebumps break out all down Billy’s arms remembering the hurricane that split open his face.

On its own, that sliver of an old wound could mean any number of things. Even paired up with his dad, it doesn’t have to mean he’s the one who put it there. It could just mean he let it happen. Billy hopes that’s the assumption Harrington makes. He can’t handle talking about it again.

He would’ve never asked for Harrington to look at him like this. He would’ve never _presumed_ to ask for that, not in a million years, but now that he has it he’s desperate for it not to stop. For as long as he can keep him, Billy wants him.

Harrington releases his past, easy as anything, and says, “We won’t tell your dad then. He doesn’t know you’re with me now, right?” he asks steadily, calm and low, how he’d talk to a nervous horse. “You wouldn’t be here if you thought he did. Look, I know people have a problem with this. Not that I get why. Whose business is it but ours if I like touching your dick? We’re not hurting anybody.”

That gets a surprised snort out of Billy, and Harrington flashes a brilliant smile in response. He’s beautiful. Billy’s chest warms all over at the thought.

“I know what I’m asking you, Billy, and I mean, everything you were saying to me that night in the car, I get it now. We can’t just do whatever out in the open, and we’ll be careful about it, I promise, but this thing where you stop yourself so no one else can stop you first? It’s bullshit. Let other people be dicks. Don’t give ’em a head start making you miserable. That’s stupid.”

Billy blinks. He’s never thought about it that way, but it’s a good point.

“Which brings me back to my other question. Is pizza okay?”

Laughing to hide the fact that his heart’s started racing again, Billy says, “Depends. We gonna eat up here with your underwear on the floor?”

Harrington glances over where Billy’s looking at a pair of boxer briefs and the dirty socks next to them. He turns an interesting shade of red and opens his mouth, holding up one finger like he has an excuse on the tip of his tongue. Billy waits, giving Harrington a look that says, _Go on_.

But he just gets redder and says, “I didn’t think we’d be coming straight up here!”

“You really did wanna do this right way,” Billy muses, sitting up smoothly.

Blushing still — and fuck, that’s a good look on him — he says, “Well, yeah. I still do. Not that I think this was wrong. I’m kinda hoping we do it again before dinner.”

Billy’s stomach flips, but he doesn’t let himself get distracted. “Why?”

“Because you were right about me,” he admits easily with a loose shrug. His color’s starting to even out again, but his eyes are as bright as ever, catching in the sun like honey. “I couldn’t make up my mind that night. I couldn’t just _make a choice._ You deserved better than that, and from the way you talked, I kinda thought maybe you _wanted_ better, too.”

“And you thought, yeah, I can be that,” Billy sums up for him, teasing, playing, but Harrington’s smile is soft and it gets his stomach fluttering again.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Billy shakes his head and leans in to kiss him quiet, thinking, _I want this,_ and winding an arm around Harrington’s back so he won’t get any ideas about going anywhere just yet. It’s not what he expected and not why he thought he’d been burning up wishing Harrington would _just fucking look at him_ since that night, but it’s the truth. He’s been falling all day and all week for Steve Harrington, and what kind of idiot is he that he thought he’d be able to stop after knowing the sight of him warm and lit up from the sun, blushing over his dirty fucking laundry?

How could he have thought he’d ever want to let go after knowing how good it feels to hold him and be held back? To be seen by him.

 _I want this,_ he thinks, found. Moored. _I want you_.

“Stay for dinner,” Harrington croons, smiling against his lips and sneaking a hand under his shirt. “Stick around.”

Billy must be as crazy as people think he is because he smiles back. He’s fucked, but he can’t say no to that smile. Can’t stop kissing it either.


	12. With Me, or Not at All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Dart on the loose, Dustin turns to an unlikely ally for help. Steve Harrington wasn’t his first, second, or third pick, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) Sass.  
> 2) Demodogs.  
> 3) Steve Harrington Disaster Bi.  
> 4) Billiam Hargrove Disaster. That's it. That's the warning. He's a disaster.

> _We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations._
> 
> — Anaïs Nin

Part Three: Layers, Cells, Constellations

Dustin needs assistance. He needs someone to _answer_ his fucking distress call. For the hundredth time today, he hisses into his radio, “Someone, anyone, pick up! This is a Code Red! I repeat, this is a Code Red!”

That’s the last of his options exhausted. He straddles his bike in Mike’s yard, thoroughly at a loss.

Every other place he’s checked so far has been a bust. Mike’s not home, Will’s not home, Lucas isn’t home — how can everyone be out all at once with Dustin none the wiser about where they up and vanished to? Even the adults he would ordinarily go to for help are AWOL. With how much worse Will’s visions have been getting, he thinks there’s really only one place they could be. But if he’s right and they’re at the lab, it’s not like he can just show up and demand answers. He’s a kid. They wouldn’t give him an inch, much less the mile he feels allotted.

The disapproving static from the blank channel on his radio gives him no sympathy, and frankly? Rude, but whatever. He chews his thumbnail, worried, thinking, and picking at one thought over and over again until the inevitability of considering it as a feasible option won’t let him ignore it any longer.

As much as he hates to even think of it, there’s one more place he can go looking for backup. His inability to coordinate a fucking response to clear and present danger through any better means _sucks,_ but never let it be said he can’t improvise. He walks his bike back out onto the street and pedals for Max’s house. Her dickwad brother might run interference, but Dustin’ll suffer that indignity if it means he might find Lucas there.

This plan presents several problems that don’t actually begin or end with Billy Hargrove, though, as it turns out. Mainly, Dustin doesn’t know how to talk to Max, and he certainly has no idea how to get her to trust him or believe that his emergency is really an emergency. He also doesn’t entirely want to rope her into it, even barring the legal deterrents. It could be dangerous. _It is_ dangerous. People almost died the last time this Upside Down shit spilled out into Hawkins, and if anyone dies this time around — well, okay, Mews died — but if _anyone else_ dies because of Dart…

He doesn’t know what he’ll do. He doesn’t want to think about it.

Turning onto Max’s street, he’s more surprised than anything to see Steve Harrington. He’s leaned right up against the blue Camaro that almost took the party out on Halloween.

Dustin shouts his name from the stop sign and pedals faster. He doesn’t slow down until he passes Steve’s BMW, and even then he nearly eats shit when he skids to a stop. Judging by Steve’s shrill yelp when Dustin throws himself off the bike, he hadn’t heard Dustin calling him. It’s astounding, actually, that a jock could have such poor spatial awareness.

“Steve, thank God,” he gasps, bending at the waist to try and catch his breath. “Holy shit.”

“Uh, Henderson.” Steve’s appropriately confused, but at least he’s not pretending he doesn’t know Dustin or something equally douchey. They don’t have time. “You all right?”

“No, I am not.” He straightens out and inadvertently locks eyes first with a startled redhead — very pretty, wow — and then, woefully less interesting, Billy Hargrove. “Huh.”

He’s shorter than Dustin thought, and he doesn’t look anywhere near as homicidal as he remembers. For a few seconds Billy’s face stays the same, but when Dustin keeps staring at him his face changes. Maybe it’s his eyebrows? Or maybe it’s just the fact that now he’s scowling like he smells something truly awful, and yep, that’s more the look Dustin associates with him.

“We have a problem I don’t know about, kid?”

Steve holds up a hand, motioning that everything’s okay without saying it in words. Dustin’s watching Billy when it happens, and he can see it work. Fascinating. He shakes his head and snaps back to the matter at hand. _They don’t have time._

“Steve, I need your help. It’s a matter of life and death.”

“So call the police?”

“No, Steve.” Dustin raises his eyebrows. He tries not to wink for emphasis, but he kinda thinks Steve needs the help. “It’s a matter of _life_ and _death_.”

“Do you understand what’s happening?” the girl asks, glancing at Billy for help, but he’s just as confused as she is.

“Life and death?” Steve mumbles, looking like he’s about to say that he doesn’t know what’s going on either until his eyes get big. “No shit?”

“Yes! _Yes_ , shit! Now, please, can we go? I’ll explain on the way.”

“What the fuck,” says Billy Hargrove, and he’s grinning but like he’s rolling a jolly rancher around in his mouth at the same time. He makes a face at Steve that works to reiterate the question, and it’s only then that Dustin notices the oil staining his hands black. They must actually be doing something to the exposed guts of his monster car. “You this kid’s babysitter, Harrington?”

“Uh, it’s, y’know. Um.”

 _Oh, jeez_ , Dustin doesn’t say out loud, and then he does say, “My dog got out. My mom’s freaking out ’cuz her — cat? Ran away.”

Billy’s eyes are like scary death beams when they swing from Steve to Dustin. It reminds him of Dart when he stopped eating Mews just long enough to remember Dustin was in the room. Like it hadn’t really even crossed his mind to consider Dustin until he went and opened up his stupid mouth.

“Billy,” Steve says.

“Harrington,” Billy answers. Even smiling, he looks and sounds insane. “Why’s this kid lying to me?”

 _Billy Hargrove is crazy_. Anyone with a brain would be afraid of him, and Dustin’s brain is perhaps even a little overdeveloped for his age group, so when Billy twitches his hand just enough to grab a rag for his oil-blackened hands, he panics.

“He ate my cat!” he shrieks.

Steve gapes at him. “What?”

“Dart!”

“ _What?_ ”

“Steve, please,” Dustin tries again. He doesn’t have the time to get into the logistics of growing a demodog up from a pollywog. “I trapped him in the cellar outside my house, but he’s dangerous! _He_ _ate my cat!_ ”

The girl perks up a bit, nervous, which is the correct response, goddamn it. “It’s last year all over again, isn’t it?” she asks.

“Last year,” Billy echoes, looking between her and Steve, already having forgotten Dustin, which isn’t shocking in the slightest.

“People said an animal attacked Barb Holland when she and Will Byers were missing. The lab kept it quiet, but _something_ messed her up before they found her.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Dustin tries, stammering, not doing the greatest job ever at changing his tune, but sue him, he’s freaking out.

“Oh, come off it,” the girl says, rubbing her arms. “You’re a terrible liar. Do you even have a dog?” She gives him a second to reply, and when he doesn’t take it, she shivers, decided. “This is bad. Billy, I want to go home.”

“Simmons,” he starts, sounding genuinely apologetic and _not_ frustrated. Figures he’d dial it down for a girl. “We’re not going anywhere till we get this done.”

“Uh, Jesus, okay,” Steve mutters, thinking for a second before pointing at Dustin. “Henderson, get in my car, and I’ll be right there”

“Thank you. _Thank_ _you_.”

“Really, Harrington?” Billy mutters, clearly unimpressed.

“You said it yourself, Billy. You gotta finish up your oil change and get Katie home. I’ll deal with this. It’s not a big deal. I’d take you, too, Katie, but I kinda doubt Billy can get through it without you.”

That makes her laugh. Not in a big way, but in a calming-down kind of way. Dustin sneaks away and walks his bike in front of a neighboring house. He figures it’s better off with a stranger than left behind with Max’s psycho brother. Dustin wanders back in the direction of their cars, and hears the tail end of their conversation.

“Fat chance,” Billy says, to an answering laugh from Steve. “Since you’re ditching me to find some kid’s dog. _Apparently_.”

“Pretty sure it’s not a dog,” Katie counters. “All the same, I’ll be staying home tonight. Thanks.”

“No guts, no glory. Right, Harrington?”

Dustin rolls his eyes and yanks open the car door. He doesn’t know why everyone has to be paired off like this. It’s stupid. “Can you guys flirt later? Please?”

Their chattering comes to an abrupt halt, and Billy comes stomping around the side of the Camaro. Dustin dives into Steve’s car and slams the lock on the door, but there’s no need. Steve catches Billy neatly and handily by the elbow, employing hardly any force at all. Then he just really casually says something to him. No fuss, no muss.

Whatever magic words he’s got at his disposal, the pissed off snarl messing up Billy’s face drops. Just like that, he looks like a regular guy again, and kind of a short one at that.

Dustin sees the girl Katie peer around the propped hood of Billy’s car and then back off, and that’s — weird. Shouldn’t she be the one consoling Billy and talking him down from his bullshit? But no, it’s Steve. He says something else and knocks his knuckles into Billy’s side. It’s barely a touch at all, but Billy moves with it, looking down and then away. Dustin doesn’t know what the hell he’s watching. It’s like a train wreck, impossible to ignore.

When Steve finally gets in behind the wheel, Billy’s back in front of his car with Katie. Steve holds up his hand as they drive past. Katie smiles brilliantly and waves, and Billy nods, calmed down for the time being but ready as ever to pounce at the first sign of blood. _Not unlike a fucking_ _demogorgon_ , Dustin might add.

“Creepy,” he says with a shudder.

Steve sighs and turns a look on Dustin that’s so thick with disapproval, Dustin balks.

“ _What?_ I’m sorry, am I the one who acted like a maniac just now?”

“Oh, you wanna talk maniacs? How about nearly running me over with your bike and then mouthing off to someone twice your size? What, Henderson, you have a death wish?”

“We’re not gonna talk about how he lunged at me? Why are you even hanging out with him? He’s a jerk!”

“Hey — ”

“Spare me the whole, ‘He’s different once you know him’ spiel. I’m pretty sure he’s not.”

“Don’t be a dick,” he mumbles, mashing the radio over to a new station. “You just freaked him out.”

Dustin stares at him. _He_ freaked _Billy_ out? How did he manage that? The Upside Down stuff didn’t even make him blink. The only other thing Dustin even said to him was the jape about flirting with Katie, and what does he care? He’s lucky someone as pretty as her would even give him the time of day, so what does it even matter? Unless…

“He was flirting _with you_ ,” Dustin murmurs, awestricken.

The silence that follows is probably the most startled he’s ever heard, but Steve doesn’t backpedal. He just turns to meet Dustin’s disbelieving stare head-on.

“ _And,_ Henderson?”

Dustin opens his mouth but stops shy of a retort. He hadn’t noticed Steve looking all cagey and defensive until just now. His deep distrust of Billy Hargrove and general bad opinion of him sort of dwarfed everything else for a minute there, but it’s starting to sink in for him how that comment must’ve sounded. No matter how he feels about Billy — or anyone — he’d never say something like that just to be cruel.

“Oh,” he says, deflating.

Steve sighs like he’s letting something huge off his chest. “Yeah. Jeez.”

Dustin’s face goes hot all over. He didn’t mean it like that. He didn’t even hear that there _was_ another way to take that stupid crack he made. Sitting up straighter in his seat, he says, “Okay, I’m sorry I freaked you out. I wasn’t trying to.”

Steve frowns in profile, his forehead wrinkling up like he’s confused. When he glances at Dustin, he looks skittish but also like he’s paying attention. He swallows and flexes his hands against the steering wheel, nodding.

“That being said, Billy Hargrove is a jerk.”

Steve groans, but he doesn’t disagree. He just says, “Look, what am I doing here? What do you want from me?”

“I told you. Dart ate my cat. I locked him in the cellar, but he’s been growing exponentially since I found him, and I’m pretty sure he’s only gonna get hungrier now that he’s bigger.”

“You said it was a matter of life and death!” Steve interrupts. “And you — _you_ _winked,_ like… ”

“He’s a demodog.”

“What? A what-dog?”

“A canine variant of the demogorgon. The demogorgon, Steve? You remember.”

Steve rubs a hand over his mouth. “You’re sure?”

“ _Yes, I’m sure._ I found him in my trash on Halloween after trick-or-treating. I thought he was some kind of reptile, but then he got bigger and his face opened up and…”

“And he ate your cat,” Steve fills in. “Jesus Christ, Henderson.”

“ _I didn’t know_ _he was one of those things!_ I thought he was my friend!”

“Yeah, well.” Steve hangs a sharp U-turn and mutters, “Sounds like _your friend_ is a jerk.”

“It’s not _Dart’s_ _fault_ he’s a bloodthirsty monster,” Dustin retorts. If Steve wants to go and open that can of worms, Dustin’s only too happy to oblige him. “Billy Hargrove, on the other hand, is a dickwad. Maybe he’s nice to you, but he totally tried to kill me and my friends a few weeks ago.”

Steve gives him another flat look, but Dustin can tell he’s listening.

“Oh, you didn’t hear about that, did you? Why doesn’t _that_ surprise me?”

“Are you gonna tell me what he did, Henderson, or am I just gonna have to take your word for it?”

So Dustin tells him. He’s not trying to be an ass, but he’s upset, actually. He shouldn’t have to explain how _deranged_ and _scary_ Billy Hargrove is to a pretty normal, run-of-the-mill guy like Steve Harrington. It should be a given.

“He ran you off the road?” Steve repeats, looking pale.

“Are you really even surprised?”

“A few weeks ago, you said? When?”

_“Does it matter?”_

“It does to me.” Steve drops a look on Dustin, like the answer’s really going to make or break it for him. “Tell me when it happened.”

“On Halloween, after school.” Dustin watches Steve’s face and squints at the obvious relief he can see there. “Uh, hello, Steve? Is that good news? You heard me say that he almost killed us all, right?”

“I heard you, yeah.”

“Okay? And?”

“And you’re right,” Steve murmurs, looking and sounding completely calm. “Billy Hargrove’s a jerk. I’ll talk to him.”

Dustin blinks, mind going blank. That’s emphatically _not_ what he meant, and honestly, it’s probably just gonna make everything a hundred times worse. With Billy, with Max. Shit, _for_ Max. What does Steve think he’s gonna do, make Billy apologize for terrorizing middle schoolers? Even if he thinks sunshine comes out of Steve’s ass — and Dustin will concede that maybe he does — this can’t turn out well. Not for anyone.

“Wow, speechless? You can thank me later.”

He pulls into a driveway and puts the BMW in park. Dustin really genuinely is speechless, so he continues blinking while Steve gets out of the car and disappears into his huge house. Dustin scrambles to follow him.

“You can’t!”

“Pretty sure I can,” Steve calls out, ducking into a door that might lead out to the garage. “What are you so worried about? You think he won’t listen to me?”

“Of course he’s not gonna listen to you!” Dustin pauses and clocks the box of vinyl records sitting on the counter.

“I think he will,” he muses, stepping out of the garage with a wooden bat. The business end’s got _nails_ through it. He gives it a little swirl for show, smirking like he knows damn well how badass he looks just holding it. A moue of distaste crosses his face, cutting the image off at the knees. He gives the bat a shake. “Not ‘cuz of this. Stop looking at me like that.”

Dustin stares at him. “What the fuck, Steve. Why do you have that?”

He shrugs, making a noncommittal sound and still rolling his wrist so the bat makes little figure eights over the tile. He says, “Little gift from Jonathan Byers. Guess I got more use out of it than he did.”

“I guess so. You got anything lying around that I can use?”

“Absolutely not. Hey, careful with that. It’s new.”

Dustin glances at the record in his hands. “Oh, sorry. This is good stuff. Color me surprised.”

Steve fidgets with the bat. “Really? You think they’re good?”

“I mean, yeah.” Dustin puts _Rubber Soul_ back in the box and rifles through the next few. “Billie Holiday, Leonard Cohen, The Velvet Underground. Solid choices. You gotta let me borrow some of these. Wait, hang on. Are you asking if I think they’re good because you don’t know if they are or not?”

“ _I told you._ They’re new.”

“You bought _all these records_ without _knowing if they’re good?_ ”

“I wanna get into music or whatever, but I don’t know that much about it. This girl in my class works at the record store, and she said this was a good place to start.”

“She told you collecting records was a good place to start?”

“ _Well, I’m_ _listening to them,_ Henderson. Obviously.”

“Which ones in this giant pile have you listened to?”

Dustin takes a step back to let Steve show him how much use he’s been getting out of this veritable trove of music. Steve plucks _Rubber Soul_ back out of the box and sets it on the counter, rooting around some more and muttering under his breath.

“So, that. Uh, the one with the cake on it… ”

Steve hums the chorus of ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ until he locates _Let It Bleed._ He keeps scrounging around, determined, and pulls a record each by Aretha Franklin and Johnny Cash before finally presenting _Night Beat_ by Sam Cooke with a grin and a flourish. He says, “This one I really like,” and then _sings_ , unashamed and enthusiastic, _“When you’re wearing them dresses, the sun come shining through / When you’re wearing them dresses, the sun come shining through / I can’t believe my eyes! / All of that belongs to you — ”_

Dustin blinks, surprised _for a few reasons_ at the sight of Steve Harrington, Jock Extraordinaire, twirling around his kitchen with a decked out, murderous baseball bat for a dance partner. As baffled as he is by the show and by the fact that _Steve sounds_ _really good,_ he can’t not join in for the chorus. Sue him, it’s a really good song.

_“Oh, you won’t do right to save ya, not your soul. / And all you wanna do is — ”_

They sing together, **_“Shake, rattle, and roll!”_** ****

And Steve: _“Every morning!”_

Then Dustin: _“Shake, rattle, and roll!”_ ****

 _“With the feeling!”_ ****

_“Shake, rattle, and roll!”_

_“A little louder!”_ ****

_“Shake, rattle, and roll!”_

Steve laughs and lets go of Dustin’s arm where they’d been spinning each other around the kitchen. Dustin’s laughing, too. He’d forgotten how much fun it was, dancing around like that. No one in the party’s really all that much for music. Will’s more the artist than any of them, but his talents have always leaned more toward the visual than the physical, and — shit, the party. _Dart_.

Dustin’s heels skid on the tile. He yells, “What are we doing? We gotta go get Dart!”

He helps Steve put away the records and takes off out the front door. They pile back into Steve’s car, the bat clunking around in the trunk. He knows from Mike and Will that Nancy and Jonathan fought the demogorgon before Eleven erased it from existence, but neither of them had much to say about Steve’s role in it. Makes sense; Dustin had never really considered Steve part of any party before. He’d always seemed more like a hapless bystander caught in the crossfire than a key player.

Then again, his whole sweet-and-nice approach with Billy Hargrove is some of the dumbest civilian bullshit Dustin’s seen from him so far, and as much as he hates to talk over Queen, his stupid plan is unconscionable. Dustin can’t abide not getting that fact through to him. Steve has other plans, though, apparently, because he’s still grinning and beats Dustin to the punch.

“ _That was_ _fun_. I’ve never sung with anyone like that before. I mean, people sing along to the radio, but that’s not the same, y’know?”

“Uh, yeah, it was fun. Look, Steve — ”

“ _And you’re_ _really good_ , Henderson. Very cool.”

“Um. Thanks? I used to sing at church.”

“Yeah?”

Dustin shrugs. “My mom insisted.”

“That’s awesome.”

“Okay, stop changing the subject!”

“What?” Steve looks at him, genuinely confused.

“ _Steve_. Please don’t talk to Billy. I mean it.”

That sours his mood, if only a little. “You’re really that scared of him.”

“Yes! Obviously! _He’s_ _scary!_ That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“Well, he doesn’t scare me, and I’m not okay with what he did. And look, if I’m being honest, he’s probably not okay with it either — and I know, all right? _I know_ you think that’s bullshit, but people aren’t as easy to pin down as you think. That goes for you and me, and it goes for him, too.”

Dustin hates to concede since he disagrees so vehemently, but he has to admit that Steve makes a compelling point. “Be that as it may, I still think he’s an asshole.”

“I was, too, once, Henderson, Jesus. People change.”

“I doubt you were ever as bad as Billy Hargrove. You never tried to kill kids.”

“I mean,” Steve sighs, agitated. “No, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been shitty in other ways.”

“Are you talking about that thing you wrote on the marquee at the movie theater?”

Steve looks at him in the half dark. “You saw that?”

“I didn’t. Somebody at school did, and it got back to Mike.”

“Ah… shit.”

“Pretty scummy, Steve,” Dustin allows, unbuckling his seatbelt when they pull up against the curb outside his house. “Still, I don’t know, doesn’t make you a murderer.” He starts to get out of the car but stops when he notices Steve hasn’t moved. “Steve? Hello? Dart?”

He snaps out of it and opens his door. “Yeah. Right.”

Steve takes the bat down out of the trunk and rests it against his shoulder. He follows Dustin to the cellar without saying another word about Billy Hargrove, and Dustin wonders if it’s because he’s run out of defensive tacks to take or if it’s finally gotten through to him that it’s a thankless task to keep trying. It doesn’t give Dustin the feeling of triumph that he thought it would.

“If you’re that determined to talk to him about it, then whatever,” Dustin says, all in a rush, pausing with his hand on the lock to the cellar door. “But it’s not on me if he breaks your jaw.”

A soft look flashes across Steve’s face and scrambles up all of Dustin’s theories about why he’d fallen into being so quiet. He huffs a soft laugh and raises his eyebrows, pointing his bat at the locked door. Dustin fiddles with the lock, and together they yank open the doors.

A moment of silence flutters by. They gaze down the darkened stairwell, neither of them moving.

“Ready?”

“You’re the one with the bat!”

Steve rolls his eyes but makes his way down the stairs alone. It’s a long moment of silence, none of the noise and fury Dustin was expecting, but what Steve has for him when he meets him down in the depths is so much worse.

“Oh, no,” Dustin whispers, staring, horrified, at the hole in the wall — at the _tunnel_. At the freshly molted skin. _“Oh, shit.”_

“Pick it up again tomorrow, Henderson?” Steve asks, sighing and shaking the wet skin off the bat.

“You wanna look for him? He’s probably fully grown by now! He’ll definitely eat us!”

“We’ll just have to be sneaky then. It’s that, or we do nothing and he eats someone else anyway. Don’t want that, do we?”

Dustin flinches, not having the words to say how much he’s been fearing that exact scenario. Instead of trying to think up a response, he follows Steve back up the stairs. They shut the cellar doors behind them, and Dustin locks up, just in case. Steve tosses the bat back in the trunk.

“Just stay home for the night, all right? I don’t want you biking home in the dark. It’s not worth it. We can loop back to Billy’s in the morning.”

“Great,” Dustin mumbles.

“I’m not asking you to give him a chance here, okay? Let’s just get through this first, and then we’ll figure the rest out later.”

“Fine. _Fine_.”

“Night, Henderson.”

“Night, Steve. Thanks for your help today,” he adds because yeah, Steve’s still the only one here and helping him. That’s worth its weight in gold.

Steve may not belong to any party, but he can be in Dustin’s from here on out if he wants. He’s earned it.

* * *

They get his bike early the next morning, and there’s no trouble. Billy’s car isn’t even parked out front like it was yesterday.

Dustin’s not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. He bikes straight home and waits for Steve to come get him. While he’s waiting, he alternates between trying his radio and dumping supplies into his backpack. Steve takes about twice as long as Dustin thought he would, but that just means he’s ready and standing outside when he does show up. Between them, they’ve got two buckets, two pairs of rubber gloves, a scary baseball bat, and a whole ton of raw beef cut into cubes.

They ride in silence, and Dustin’s fine with it, but a really fitful night of sleep hasn’t left him feeling great about their agreement the night before.

“Are you still gonna talk to him about it?” Dustin watches him, and though he doesn’t answer, the general calm around him might as well be a _yes_. “Why bother, Steve? What do you think you’re gonna accomplish?”

“He’s my friend, Henderson. Bad enough I can’t tell him about your dog-lizard-whatever, but this is different. I’m not lying to him about this.”

“Steve, listen to yourself. If he didn’t tell you about it in the first place, he already lied by omission.”

His hands tighten on the wheel, but he doesn’t say anything, and Dustin watches him watch the road. The gears in his brain are turning, connecting the data from today to what he saw yesterday.

He doesn’t mean for one thought to slot into another and become realization, but it fits, doesn’t it? As insane as it is, it fits. Because flirting doesn’t actually have to mean anything, _unless it does,_ and the way Steve’s acting, it seems like it must.

“Oh, shit,” Dustin breathes. “You actually like him. You’re not dating him, are you?”

“What?” Steve scrunches up his face like _Dustin’s_ the moron. “No! _What?_ ”

“Oh, my God, you are. But I thought you were with Nancy.”

Steve sighs and ruffles the hair hanging over his forehead. “No, not anymore.”

“You’re dating Billy Hargrove,” Dustin mumbles again, perplexed.

“Henderson, I really need you to not say shit like that, okay?”

“ _But you’re dating Billy Hargrove_.”

That cagey, hunted look comes up in his eyes again, so Dustin puts a pin in it, _but he’s dating Billy Hargrove_. It’s fine. It’s none of his business, nor does he want it to be his business. He can be casual and not make a big deal out of it.

“I just have one question, though.”

Steve gives him a salty little glare and parks the car on the side of the road. Dustin climbs out and walks around to the trunk with him, about to shoot his mouth off when his radio crackles to life. Lucas asks where he is, what’s going on, and Dustin fills him in. They need to get moving if they wanna make it to the junkyard before dark, though, so he keeps it short and sweet.

They walk the train tracks in dead silence except for the dull, wet sound of meat hitting the ground. Dustin glances over at Steve, chewing on his cheek.

He doesn’t get it.

Not the two-dudes thing; he’s read about Harvey Milk and Gilbert Baker, and he’s not ignorant enough to think guys haven’t loved guys for as long as they’ve loved girls, or any other permutation of existing combinations. He’s even coming around to the idea that maybe Billy _is_ different around Steve, that maybe they make each other _want_ to be different, or something. But he doesn’t _get_ _it_.

“Henderson, I swear to God,” Steve mutters.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“I can hear you thinking. Spit it out.”

“Just… Billy? Really? How’d it even happen?”

“Ugh,” he sighs, rolling his eyes and tossing beef cubes onto the tracks. “I don’t know if you have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, but you don’t choose how you feel. You just.” He makes a frustrated sound and flicks meat at the ground. “You just _feel_ , y’know? It’s like asking why lightning strikes where it does.”

“He really knocked you on your ass then, huh?”

Steve sputters a laugh and tosses more meat cubes. He smiles. “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.”

Dustin sprinkles a few more handfuls of beef onto the ground. It’s getting less weird the longer the idea sits with him. He wouldn’t normally fixate on something like this anyway.

It doesn’t matter to him one way or another who Steve’s kissing in his free time. He just wishes Billy Hargrove wasn’t Billy Hargrove, and okay, _maybe_ he’s not who Dustin thinks he is. Maybe Steve’s not being unreasonable here by standing up for him. Stranger things have happened.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Steve says idly, tossing meat cubes and watching them scatter.

“When, yesterday? I said a lot of things, Steve. You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

“You called my boyfriend a murderer?”

Hearing him phrase it like that, every word that makes that sentence what it is, gets Dustin looking at him. He’s already reworked his worldview to include Steve’s relationship with Billy or the fact that he’s keen on building one with him, so he’s not surprised, exactly, but it’s one thing to know and another thing entirely to hear it spoken in plain English. More than just that, though, Steve’s determination to explain it even when he doesn’t necessarily owe that to Dustin or to anyone, is sort of amazing.

“Maybe that was taking it a step too far,” Dustin hedges, shaking meat off his fingers. “But he’s _at least_ homicidal, Steve. Or he acted like he was, in any case.”

“Yeah, he did, I know. That’s not… I know it happened the way you say it did because that’s exactly the kinda thing he would’ve done. I don’t know why. I don’t know what goes on in his head half the time.”

“Okay?” Dustin says, watching Steve’s eyes go distant.

“The thing at the movie theater,” he starts, and trails off. He glances out into the trees, tosses a handful of meat, and sighs through his nose. “Nancy and Jonathan showed up, and we fought, but it wasn’t because of that ugly shit I wrote.”

Dustin stops walking, and a few steps later, so does Steve. “Then why did you?”

Steve presses his lips together, staring at his feet for a long few seconds. Dustin has no idea what he’s about to say. He doesn’t know how it could be relevant to what they’ve been talking about at all, until Steve comes right out and says it.

“I said Jonathan probably killed his brother, and that’s why he went missing.”

For a second, for more than a second, the words don’t compute beyond morphemes and intonation. Meaning filters in slowly and chills him to the bone.

He remembers that night. He remembers watching the police fish a small body out of the quarry. He remembers thinking, _She said he was alive. She said he was okay. He can’t be dead. He can’t be gone._

Even knowing now that it wasn’t Will in the water doesn’t dull the ache in his chest recalling how it felt. For an ugly moment in time, Will was dead, and it hurt more than logic or rationality could protect against. The memory stays with him — the tears streaming down Lucas’ face, the way Mike screamed, how they all cried, even Eleven, and how she hadn’t known the words to tell them why it was happening because there are never words to say why life isn’t what it’s supposed to be.

He still can’t find words for it. He doesn’t know how to talk about the kind of pain that’ll rip a person’s heart straight from their chest without killing them.

“Yeah,” Steve murmurs, when Dustin still can’t speak. “So he kicked my ass.”

“You deserved it,” Dustin answers, automatic, as the feeling starts to come back to his hands. “Holy shit, Steve.”

He nods, takes that for what it is, and turns to start walking again. He tosses another handful of meat cubes, and after a beat, Dustin runs to catch up to him. They walk in silence for a little while, and Steve’s voice when he’s ready to talk again, is soft and measured, thoughtful. Dustin didn’t know to expect that from him either. Steve Harrington’s full of surprises.

“Not everybody does the right thing on the first try, Henderson.”

Framed in that light, Dustin can see why Steve gives a shit if Billy Hargrove will always be a dirtbag. Not because he can’t see through rose-tinted goggles, but because who he used to be was once at odds with who he had it in him to become. It’s… a lot, and again, yeah, _still,_ not what Dustin expected.

“Billy’s… a lot of things,” Steve starts, “and it’s not like he doesn’t know it. But he’s just a kid, Henderson. We’re all just kids. He screwed up, but he’s gonna fix it. Okay? He’s gonna fix it.”

“Okay, Steve.”

“Okay. Good.”

They walk a ways more, and another thought, lighter but still shot through with its own kind of weight, emerges in Dustin’s mind. It surprises him more than any of the other things he’s had to learn in the last two days, but maybe it shouldn’t. He knows from secondhand stories that Steve doesn’t turn his back on a fight, not if it’s to protect someone else, but this is a different kind of fight, and it has a different kind of feel. It’s softer.

“You’re a really good friend, Steve.”

He laughs, quietly, like he doesn’t much believe it. “Nah, I just know screw-ups.”

Dustin can’t argue with facts, but he figures neither can Steve, so he says, “You turned out all right. I guess if there’s hope for you, there’s hope for Billy Hargrove.”

“Thanks,” Steve snorts, smiling small and looking genuinely touched.

“There is one other thing I’ve been wondering about.”

Way more at ease now than he’s been all morning, Steve says, “What’s that?”

“Well, so… how _do_ you make a move on someone when you know you like them?”

Steve looks up from where he’d been gazing pretty intensely into his meat bucket. He blinks and shrugs. “When you know they _want_ you to.”

“That doesn’t help me.”

“It’s like electricity, Henderson. I told you before, you just _feel it_. When you know, you know.”

“Lightning and electricity… I’m noticing a weird trend in how you experience sexual attraction,” Dustin points out.

“Dude, don’t talk about my sexual attraction.”

“Hey, no judgement from me. I’m just saying.”

“Yeah, well, don’t. Forget I mentioned it.” He turns to glare but stops short to give Dustin a considering once-over. His mouth tilts up at the corners. “ _Oh!_ Who is it?”

“What? No, there’s — _no one_. There’s no one!”

“Uh huh.”

“Stop doing that thing with your face.”

Steve laughs and throws down another handful of meat. “It’s exciting, isn’t it?”

“Maybe for you,” Dustin grumbles, looking away and thinking about how Max couldn’t care less about him. That’s probably not fair to her, but it doesn’t feel fair to him either. Everything about it feels pretty terrible. “You’re popular and you have great hair. Girls can’t get enough of you. Or, y’know.”

“It’s not about the hair, Henderson. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’ll catch a girl’s attention that way, sure. That’s just how it is. But she’s not gonna stick around just ‘cuz you look good.”

“Is that what happened with you and Nancy?”

His lips press together. He hums, “No, she’s just… strong in a way that I’m not, which I highly recommend, by the way.”

“But she dumped you.”

“That…” Steve waves his hand. “It was a mutual decision, okay? A mutual parting of ways.”

“But why? If you liked that she’s stronger than you?”

“When it came down to it, we just wanted different things. Like, you can try to be what you think someone else is looking for all you want, y’know? But at some point you gotta be yourself, and the only way you’re ever gonna know it’s real when someone likes you is if you’re only you all the time. It doesn’t have to be a big mystery, right?”

Dustin sprinkles more meat on the tracks and focuses really hard on the ironworks below his feet. The fact that Steve doesn’t hear how cliched that advice is and the fact that he means it really sort of tips the scales in his favor.

“So what you’re saying is, Billy likes you for you.”

Steve rolls his eyes and points at Dustin. He’d be more menacing without the bright yellow gloves, but as it is he looks like he just walked off the set of a Pine-Sol commercial. He says, “I don’t mind talking about this when it’s just us, but I really need you not to bring it up in casual conversation. If the wrong person hears you — ”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, discretion is my middle name. My lips are sealed. But we’re literally in the middle of the woods, Steve. There’s no one around for miles.”

“When we’re around other people,” he clarifies, flicking marbled meat cubes off his fingers. “Okay?”

“Read you loud and clear, Steve. Although, if you’re worried about secrecy, I gotta say, you guys could use some work on the subtlety front.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? I didn’t even know you guys were flirting until you told me you were!”

Steve’s face turns red and he gets quiet. It’s hard to know what feeling he’s the most consumed with, but Dustin hates to put him through it over a relatively harmless slip.

“Obviously I’m not gonna tell anyone, Steve. Still, if you don’t want everyone to know, you’re both gonna have to tone it down a bit. And don’t get me wrong, I think it’s stupid that you _have_ to keep it a secret, but if you’re _gonna_ , then just, you know, get better at it.”

“Right,” Steve sighs, shaky but lightening up by shades. “Easy.”

They walk a few yards in silence, and Dustin’s still not super satisfied with the uneasy look on Steve’s face. He doesn’t know how to fix it, but maybe there’s another way to get his mind off things that aren’t so easy to change.

“So what’s the deal with you and your whole deep dive into music?”

“Oh, that. Nancy’s been on me to give it a chance. She thinks I’m _talented,_ ” he says, giving Dustin a look like, _Have you ever heard something so ridiculous?_

Dustin shakes his head. “Yeah, Steve. _Because_ _you are?_ ”

“ _Come on_. Anyone can sing! It’s not a big deal.”

“Anyone can learn,” Dustin corrects him. “As long as they have the capacity for speech. That doesn’t mean everyone has a natural inclination towards it or that they all put in the effort to practice if they don’t. And since it sounds like you don’t practice, at least not until recently, I’m leaning towards _Nancy’s right._ Congratulations. You’re talented.”

Steve rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t argue. “ _Whatever_. It all just sounds the same to me. I don’t know what I’m supposed to listen for or how to get any better at it.”

“Are you asking for tips? Because if you’re asking for tips, I want something in exchange for my knowledge.”

“What then? Name it.”

Dustin doesn’t even have to think before he asks him, “Tell me how you get your hair to do that thing it does.”

“Faberge Organics,” Steve says without pausing for breath. “Farrah Fawcett hairspray, _when damp_. Not wet, Henderson. Damp. Now what can you tell me about music?”

“Uhh, well, I mean, the girl at the record store for sure knew her stuff. She sent you off with a huge variety of genres to choose from.”

“Thank you, Lindy,” Steve murmurs to himself, and then, stoically, “Genre?”

“You know, like… blues, soul, rock ’n roll, jazz. _Genre._ ”

Steve side eyes him. “It’s not just for movies?”

Dustin very carefully doesn’t laugh. He thinks about it for a second and says, “You know how Johnny Cash sounds different from the Beatles?”

“Johnny Cash… oh, ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ — but hey, wait, ‘Flesh and Blood’ sounds like ‘Norwegian Wood’ off _Rubber Soul_. They can’t be that different.”

It’s clear just from that beleaguered explanation that Steve’s still figuring out how to talk about music, but Dustin’s pretty impressed all the same. For someone who couldn’t conceptualize genre two seconds ago, Steve has a pretty solid ear for music, and his recall’s better than Dustin would’ve expected for a beginner.

“Music isn’t always just one thing. A lot of it borrows and intersects based on tradition and technique. That’s all without even accounting for theory or _taste_.”

Steve squints. “That sounds like a lot of work just to make something that sounds good.”

“It’s like anything good worth having,” Dustin explains with all the patience and wisdom of any good teacher that came before him.

“So how do I practice?”

“First of all, you gotta start smaller. You like to sing, right? So get the words and the timing down first. Then you can branch out to more complicated stuff like key changes or singing in harmony with a recording.”

“Harmony? What does that mean?”

“Think of it like this. Three notes make a chord, and a chord will sound richer and more complex than a single note. So ‘Michelle’ from _Rubber Soul,_ for example. Give me a line.”

“Uh, jeez, uh… _I love you, I love you, I love you_.”

Dustin taps the rim of the bucket and comes in with the backing vocals while Steve sings.

“ _That’s all I want to say / Until I find a way / I will say the only words I know that you’ll understand / Michelle, my belle_ … How did you know what your part was supposed to sound like?”

“By listening to the song over and over. But the notes I was singing aren’t the only ones that work there. Harmonies are kind of flexible in terms of where you can take them, but they’re not super forgiving if you don’t get the right note. If you’re going up, you want to be a certain… step up? Like if I sang here _la-la-la-la_ , you’d want to sing _la-la-la-la_ or _la-la-la-la_ to match the harmony. And it works because those sounds make up a chord, like I was telling you. That’s how you can hear if it’s right or if it’s out of tune.”

“And for ‘Michelle’ the _oohs_ comes in on _that’s all I want to say_?”

“Well,” Dustin sighs. He _is_ trying to make it easier to understand. “Yeah, basically. There’s a wider range of stuff you can do or notes you can shoot for, but that’s keeping it really simple.”

Steve stares hard at the train tracks, eyebrows coming down in concentration. “Can I try the harmony part?”

“Now? Already?”

“Well, yeah. We’re here.”

“Okay. Then, um… _I need to, I need to, I need to / I need to make you see,_ ” Dustin sings, almost stopping altogether when Steve comes in on a higher note than the one Dustin did for him. On the second batch of oohs, he adjusts the pitch until he finds one that lands. _“Oh, what you mean to me / Until I do, I’m hoping you will know what I mean._ Holy shit, Steve! _”_

He grins, excited. “Good?”

“Dude! Try perfect! How about ‘Somebody to Love’ — do you know it?”

“ _I’m_ _starting out_ , Henderson. I don’t live under a rock.”

Dustin laughs and counts off.

They walk the length of the tracks belting out Queen tracks, and it makes the hike up to the junkyard pass a lot quicker than he thought it would. By the time they reach their destination with enough daylight left to do what they set out to do, Dustin’s actually looking forward to spending that time being holed up with Steve. At least they can talk music. It’ll help take his mind off how weird and stressful the past few days have been.

He still has no idea where Will and Mike are, and that’s probably the worst part. Everything always gets stupid and crisscrossed when the party’s broken up like this, and _speaking_ of stupid and crisscrossed, Lucas brought Max, but that’s not all.

“All this for a dog, huh, Harrington?”

 _Great,_ Dustin thinks. So much for talking music.

“Just be cool, all right?” Steve mutters, pulling on the straps of his backpack. “Hey, Billy.”

Billy swans over and Dustin flees to regroup with Lucas and Max. Leave the idiots to be idiots together.

“You _told_ them?” Dustin whisper-yells where Max can definitely hear.

“He told me,” Max asserts, crossing her arms over her chest. “Billy just came to drop us off. He’s not staying.”

Dustin rolls his eyes and risks glancing over his shoulder at Steve and Billy. They don’t seem to be actively flirting now, but Billy’s definitely leaning in way too close to look friendly. He’s almost kinda succeeding in playing it off as hostility, but Dustin’s got his number and he’s got Steve’s, too. He doesn’t think Max or Lucas do, though, so maybe they can be forgiven for thinking Billy came up here with any intention of actually walking away.

Doesn’t matter. However things pan out, he’s gonna keep his mouth shut. They were alone before, but Dustin’s not saying shit now that Billy’s in earshot. He’s gonna keep his head down and help reinforce the bus _because_ _that’s the plan_. He’s gonna stick to the plan.

“Dart really got bigger?” Lucas asks in an actual whisper when Max has gone off to find suitable scraps around the yard to use.

“Yeah,” Dustin mumbles, glancing around, paranoid. “Why’d Billy drive you out here anyway?”

“Something about a curfew and wanting to keep an eye on Max. Sounds like their dad’s kind of a hard-ass.”

Funny that he doesn’t seem to be here to watch Max at all, given that he’s only got eyes for Steve right now. Dustin doesn’t have an opinion on the match — he maintains that it’s none of his business — but he still finds himself trying to figure out what Steve sees in him. He watches them pry a car door off its hinges and watches it come free with a metallic screech. It puts Steve flat on his back in the grass, and Billy howls with laughter, holding his hand out a second later to help him up.

Dustin hums, considering. He doesn’t realize he’s still staring at Billy pulling Steve up onto his feet until his eyes jump from Steve directly to Dustin, a warmer version of his crazy grin still fixed in place. Dustin turns his whole body around and jogs purposefully in the direction of the bus. Lucas protests but follows closely behind.

“Dude, what’s your deal?”

“It doesn’t make you nervous that he’s here?”

They’re close enough to Max now that she whirls around to look at them with her nose all scrunched up. Lucas manages to beat her to the punch this time, and Dustin catches himself realizing that Lucas came here with Max and that they’ve got a kind of rhythm synched up. It makes sense. Lucas has had an easier time leveling with Max than Dustin has. In general he’s a lot better with people and making new friends than him, Mike, or Will have ever been, barring the whole thing with Eleven, but he was right to be a little cautious. Psychic powers, and all.

But that only stands to make it weirder that Lucas isn’t freaking out even a bit. For as long as he didn’t trust Eleven, how can he just get over what happened on Halloween like it’s nothing?

“Not really,” Lucas says, unbelievably. “He’s been pretty normal so far.”

“You’re not even a little upset about what happened?”

“Maybe I am,” he concedes. “But Max says he’s fine, and I trust her.”

 _“Thank you,”_ Max interjects, and Dustin has a moment of intense guilt over the way the party in general has treated her since they met. She hasn’t given them a reason yet not to take her at her word, even though they’ve given her plenty of reasons not to extend that same courtesy to them. “He’s not staying. I already told you.”

“Looks to me like he _is,_ ” he tells her, for all that he’s starting to realize he can’t change her mind about this.

“All right, then what do you care?” she challenges. “He’s with me, and I’m not going anywhere, so if he wants to stay, then he stays.”

God, she’s cool. _She’s so cool_. Dustin gets what Steve was saying about Nancy being stronger than him because Max is definitely cooler than both Dustin and Lucas combined. He even sort of understands why Lucas would table the incident on Halloween based purely on the fact that she vouches for Billy. It’s hard to disagree with her when she so clearly believes what she’s saying.

“Fine. _Fine_ ,” he snaps, throwing his hands. “The more the merrier, I guess. It’s not like we signed nondisclosure agreements or anything. Oh, wait, that’s right. We _did_ sign nondisclosure agreements. _Legally binding_ nondisclosure agreements. _Drawn up by the_ _government_.”

“Jesus, unclench,” Max mutters. “It’s probably not even as bad as you think it is.”

Dustin shakes his head and turns around to start rounding up scrap to secure to the bus and nearly runs right into Steve. And of course, right at his shoulder, there’s Billy and his baby blue death beams.

“We’re in it, Henderson,” Steve says. “All of us. Let’s just get the bus rigged up while we still have the light.”

“Yeah, Henderson,” Billy muses, eyes glittering. “Unclench.”

He does not unclench, actually, but they do get the place battle-ready before dusk settles in. They dump the last of the meat in full view of where they’ll be setting up shop in the bus, and by the time they’re hunkering down for the night, Billy and Max still haven’t gone. He tells Max a few times that they’re gonna have to leave soon regardless of whether “the dog” makes an appearance or not.

Dustin doesn’t say what he wants to say, which is, _You’re gonna wish you’d left when you had the chance as soon as Dart shows up._

Max barters for five more minutes, and Billy lets her have it, though he grumbles. She’s been asking for five more minutes for the last half hour, if not longer.

She retreats up onto the roof to sit with Lucas, leaving Billy and Steve sat together by the accordion door at the front of the bus. Dustin crouches at the bottom of the ladder a good distance away from them, trying not to be aware of the fact that he still somehow ended up the fifth wheel on his own stupid recon mission.

Billy squats down next to him with a blustery sigh and nearly gives Dustin a heart attack. He hadn’t even heard him move.

“Henderson.”

“Uh, hi. Billy.”

“Guess I owe you and your little friends an apology.”

 _Oh,_ ** _God_** _,_ Dustin thinks, glaring at Steve where he’s rolling the handle of the bat in his palms. It spins and spins like a top between his feet. He’s not watching them, but Dustin can tell he’s listening closely.

“Gee, I wonder how you came to that conclusion.”

“No, you don’t. Think I haven’t seen you watching me since I got here?”

“Yeah, well, you scare the shit out of me, and I don’t want to hear whatever Steve’s making you say.”

“Nobody makes me do anything,” Billy grumbles, and as much as Dustin doesn’t really believe that, he also kind of _does_ believe it. “Look, I know you know, okay? No point in acting like you don’t.”

“So what? You wanna make nice with me so I won’t tell anyone?”

Billy inhales slowly and turns to glance back at Steve. Dustin does, too, and this time he’s got his eyes locked firmly on Billy’s. His expression is calm, his gaze steady. Billy breathes out just as slowly. He turns back to face the slatted windows.

“He says you won’t.”

“He’s right. So just save it. There’s no need.”

“ _I’m_ _sorry_ , all right?” Billy looks right at him, and his death beam eyes don’t look angry, for once. They just look serious, intent. “I’m sorry. I’m an asshole. Believe me or don’t, but I’m fucking working on it. And if anyone else needs to hear me say it, then I’ll tell them, too.”

Dustin watches Billy’s face for any evidence of dishonesty, but he looks like he genuinely means it. How much of his behavior yesterday corresponds with the tight-lipped fear Dustin’s been seeing on Steve’s face all day? What are the chances Billy’s bluster and volatility are all just part of an act to hide that fear?

What are the chances he actually cares about Steve enough to wanna earn how much he believes in him?

If that’s true — if there’s even a possibility that it might be true — isn’t that at least worth a second chance?

“I believe that you’re an asshole,” Dustin says, speculatively, casting a line to see if Billy takes the bait. To see if he’s for real.

“Yeah, you and everyone else,” Billy counters smoothly, smirking just the tiniest bit when Steve chortles under his breath. The sound of it, or maybe just Steve’s presence at his back, seems to mellow him out the rest of the way. “Look, you don’t gotta forgive me. I know what I’m like, and I know I got fuckin’ miles to go before I get square, but I want to be better. And I’m sorry. I am.”

Dustin stares at him, baffled, probably ensorcelled. He can discern no clear verdict on the content of Billy Hargrove’s character as yet, but he’s no dirtbag. He might be a hypnotist. Do his death beam eyes just never falter in their intensity or what? That hardly seems fair, or practical.

“Well, in that case, I guess I believe the other thing, too. Thanks, Billy.”

Billy sighs, quieter this time, and looks at Harrington again. He’s looking back at Billy with the same calm expression, only now he’s smiling, too.

“Guys,” Lucas calls down. “Ten o’ clock!”

Steve comes up to the window panel on Billy’s other side. They can’t see anything through the fog rolling in, but Dustin can just make out the outline of _something_ investigating the meat trail.

“Shit, Henderson. Looks like your dog turned up after all.”

“Yeah… he’s not taking the bait, though.”

“No appetite for gasoline? Wow, go figure.”

“Maybe he just wants something bigger,” Steve says, pushing away from the window panel to stand up.

“What’s the plan, Harrington?” Billy asks, alert and focused and following hot on Steve’s heels.

Steve takes up the bat and holds up his hand in that silent gesture that got Billy to stand down before. This time, instead of stopping, Billy moves into it, and two of Steve’s fingers make contact with his chest.

“You should stay here.”

“Fuck that. I don’t know what’s out there, _but it’s_ _not a fucking_ _dog_ if you’re taking that with you.”

“Billy — ”

“Steve,” Billy grits out. “With me, or not at all.”

Steve stares at him for a second. In the dark, it’s hard to make out the look on his face, but after a long pause, he sighs, digs around in his pocket for a lighter, and tosses it over to Dustin. Then they’re both out the door.

“What’s going on?” Max calls out, climbing down the ladder.

Lucas stays on the roof with his binoculars to keep watch, but Max and Dustin peer through the slats in the windows as Steve and Billy inch out into the clearing together. Steve walks out ahead with the bat swinging in his hand while Billy pulls up the rear wielding the car door as a shield. It’s eerily, horrifically quiet, and bit by bit, the fog ghosts in closer toward the bus. Right at the edge, Dustin sees a figure emerge.

“Dart,” he whispers.

“Are you sure it’s not — ”

Even from this distance they can both see Dart’s face open up around a roar. Steve doesn’t lose his nerve, but Dustin can see Billy nearly drop the car door. He also sees him swinging the door around to the right, pressing his back right up to Steve’s.

“Three o’ clock!” Lucas shouts at the top of his lungs. _“Three o’ clock!”_

Dustin hears them before he sees them. He runs to the door and throws it open.

 _“Guys! Abort!_ **_Abort!_ ** _”_

“Billy!” Max screams. “Behind you!”

He spins around, braced for impact, and rolls with the blow. The demodog glances off the flat of the car door, and Dustin doesn’t think it’s an accident that it flies in the opposite direction of where Steve’s hauling ass back to the bus. Max yells for them to run and get the hell out of there, and Dustin yells, too, though he has no idea what he’s even saying. He slams his hands on the windows, frantic, desperate for them to get back to safety.

Steve slides across the hood of a junked car dodging the pack and hits the ground rolling. Billy steps in above him with the makeshift shield and swings it right into a charging demodog’s face. He looks like a goddamn Olympic discus thrower. A second demodog catches him from the side not a second later, forcing him to take the hit.

Max nearly runs out the door then, but Steve takes it out with a single brutal swing and drags Billy up onto his feet. They sprint the last few yards to the bus without looking back, Lucas yanking Max and Dustin out of the way of the doors right as Steve’s shoving Billy into the bus. He collapses onto the steps behind him, kicking the door shut and sliding a metal sheet over it. Billy’s trapped underneath him in an awkward sprawl holding onto the safety rail with both hands, feet planted up against the barrier in a wide, sturdy stance.

Voice breaking, Billy yells, “ _What the_ ** _fuck_** _, Harrington?_ ”

“Just help me hold it!” he shouts back.

Max, Lucas, and Dustin are screaming, too, and backing away from the door. The whole bus shakes and creaks with the rhythmic pounding at the door. Dustin wonders if this is what getting caught in an earthquake feels like. Eventually the thudding stops, and the ensuing silence is almost scarier than the screams and rending metal.

Billy drops his feet and struggles to stand up. He calls out, “Max? Where are you?”

“Over here,” she gasps. “Shit, Billy. _Holy shit_.”

A bang cuts through the quiet, then another and another. Beating along the walls, up, up, and prowling closer. They watch the ceiling in collective horror and anticipation. Dustin remembers the open door to the roof at the last second, and so does everyone else.

“Max,” he hears Billy say, but then she’s staring straight into a demodog’s face and screaming.

“Get out of the way!” Steve yells, rushing to the front.

In the same heartbeat, Billy pushes past Dustin and Lucas to get Max behind him. It puts him right at Steve’s shoulder again, both of them staring up into the demodog’s gaping maw.

They’re gonna die.

But then, they don’t. _They don’t?_

Dustin opens his eyes and tries to breathe. His throat hurts from screaming. He lets go of Lucas — they must’ve latched onto each other in the pandemonium. Billy keeps his arm barred around Max and brings his other hand to Steve’s shoulder, checking both of them before he lets go. Max is still trying to catch her breath, but she doesn’t let that stop her from thumping her hands down Billy’s arms and front. She’s scanning for injuries, Dustin thinks, but probably giving him a few more bruises in the process.

“Max,” Billy says, trying to grab her arms. “ _Max_.”

She stops, panting, and asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Jeez. Are you?”

“Yeah,” she mutters, patting his arm gingerly. “Sorry.”

Lucas leads the way outside. Dustin leaps down the stairs and toes at the discarded car door when he comes across it. The edge Billy swung into a demodog’s face is dark and gooey with blood. He looks from it to Billy until he meets Dustin’s eyes and nods somberly. Billy scoffs, but he nods back.

Billy Hargrove might just be all right.

“What the hell,” Lucas murmurs.

Max shudders. “My question also.”

“Where do you think they’re going?” Steve asks, resting the bat against his shoulder and looking out across the junkyard with a contemplative look on his face.

“Where else,” Dustin says. He doesn’t bother phrasing it as a question because honestly. This shit _always_ goes back to Hawkins Lab.

Steve sighs. “Hey, Billy.”

“What, Harrington.”

“Can we catch a ride with you?”

“That depends,” he drawls. “Are you gonna keep lying out your ass about all this shit?”

He flashes a tired smile. “What would be the point, after that?”

“Fine, but Max rides shotgun. You smell like a fuckin’ slaughterhouse.”

Steve opens his mouth but doesn’t argue. He hangs back with Lucas and Dustin while Max jogs ahead to keep pace with Billy. They’re both discovering all this Upside Down shit at the same time, so it makes sense that she’d wanna hear his take on it. Maybe she’s double checking with him to make sure he saw everything that she did.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” Lucas says out of nowhere.

“What?” Dustin asks, tightening his backpack straps.

“For bringing backup,” he clarifies. “You’re welcome.”

“Oh, my God, we’re not disregarding the part where you broke party rule.”

“So did you! This whole thing with Dart? Hello?”

“Can you guys please not do this when I’m about to be trapped in a backseat with you,” Steve groans.

They pile into Billy’s car, and Dustin fumes in the backseat. Well, he _tries_ to fume. Steve squashes himself into the middle seat so Lucas and Dustin won’t be able to bicker around him, and it’s comical how his knees keep knocking into the front seats.

“Where’s your car anyway?” Billy asks, hitting the lights.

“By the train tracks. Uh, east of here?”

“West, Steve,” Dustin corrects.

“West! West of here.”

Billy rolls the Camaro to a stop at a turn in the road and contorts in his seat to give Steve _a look_. Dustin can only describe it as amazed. A second later Billy confirms his suspicions.

“Amazing. Okay, somebody tell me where I’m going.” Billy eases back around to face the front. “We gotta get home.”

“Billy,” Max starts.

“No, I’m getting you home,” he repeats, enunciating carefully. “My dad’s already gonna flip the fuck out over how late it is. We’re getting them to the lab or whatever, and then I’m taking you back.”

“Don’t you want to stop these things?” she asks.

“It’s not about what I want,” Billy snaps, and then recoils, plunging the car into an ugly silence. He smacks the wheel with his hand. “We need to get back. Somebody tell me where I’m going,” Billy says again, but he doesn’t sound the same as he did before.

“Turn right on this road coming up,” Dustin tells him.

Billy follows directions without replying. Lucas looks around Steve at Dustin and then up at Steve when he catches them at it. Steve shrugs in a silent bid for them not to push. He must know something about what’s got Billy all wound up and deathly quiet all of a sudden.

“It’s another right at the next fork, isn’t it?” Lucas asks in an aside, and Dustin nods.

Max glances back at them, then at Billy. “Right at the next fork.”

He glances at her, nods, and turns his attention back to the road. “Thanks.”

She watches him for a second. “Billy, I’d cover for you. He can’t get mad at you if it’s my fault we stayed out so late.”

Billy doesn’t answer for a few long seconds. He takes the turn she told him about and then just looks at her. Dustin can’t see his face, but his voice comes out strained.

“You know that’s what I’m worried about.”

“Billy — ”

“Stay out of it, Harrington.”

Max leans forward in her seat. “I won’t get in trouble, Billy. You won’t either if you just let me explain.”

“We had a curfew, we missed it.”

“Yeah, we missed it! We’re already late, so there’s no point hurrying back now.”

“It’s not up to you, Max,” he says. “It’s not your call to make.”

“This next left,” Lucas calls out.

“I want to see this through! Don’t you care if everyone makes it out okay?”

Billy’s quiet for a beat, and then he takes the turn harder than necessary and they all jerk to the right. Dustin smacks into Steve, but he manages to keep from slamming into Lucas by grabbing onto the center console.

“None of us are gonna make it out if he wraps the car around a tree,” Dustin mutters under his breath.

Lucas makes a _shut up_ hand gesture at him, and Steve and Max turn in their seats to glare at him, but Billy doesn’t react. He just carries on talking in a tone that says he doesn’t think the conversation’s changed tracks at all.

“We just found out about all this shit tonight. I wasn’t invited, and I’m not hanging around any longer than I have to.” He flicks a glance at Steve in the mirror. “Something to say?”

Steve shakes his head, snapping out of the blank stare he’d been pointing at Billy. Even in the dark, there’s something in his eyes like he’s thinking hard about something and trying not to show his hand too soon. “Nope. Staying out of it.”

The car comes to a stop at an intersection. Dustin clears his throat and tells Billy to go right. It’s another fifteen minutes navigating through maze-like backroads before they finally swing onto the street that leads to the lab, and Billy’s agitation has skyrocketed. Max hasn’t given up on wheedling at him to let her stay, but he’s given up on the prospect of talking her out of it.

Dustin’s beyond grateful when Hawkins Lab comes into view. When they get a little closer, they can see another car parked outside the main entrance at the end of the road.

“Is that Jonathan?” Lucas asks, sitting up in his seat.

“And Nancy,” Steve points out, pulling a face at Billy when he glances at him in the rear-view mirror. “Look at that, Billy. You got what you wanted. Drop us off here. We’ll walk the rest of the way.”

Billy rolls his eyes and punches the _gas_ rather than the _brake_. He shoots down the road in a straight roaring line, then swings the car in a wide arc a spare couple feet from where Jonathan’s parked at the access gate. He nearly clips the back of Jonathan’s car but manages to clear it, jerking the Camaro to a sudden stop on the side of the road with the nose of the car facing the way they’d just come. Dustin would almost be impressed if he wasn’t on the verge of pissing himself.

Gesturing out the window, Billy says, “Get out then.”

Max has to climb out so Lucas, Steve, and Dustin can shuffle out on her side, but instead of getting back into her seat, she leaves her door hanging open and takes off with them.

_“Max!”_

Lucas grabs her hand and Dustin’s elbow, and the three of them bolt to Jonathan’s car. He’s trying to get the gate open, but it’s de-powered and won’t budge. Dustin hip checks him and smacks the button, too aware of Steve and Billy looking like they’re about to start throwing punches in the middle of the road. He’s been steadily reshaping his opinion of Billy Hargrove since yesterday, but he’s not sure about Steve putting himself in between Billy and whatever’s making him so crazy all of a sudden.

If only they could get the damn door open.

“Steve?” Nancy calls out, stepping away from the security booth.

Billy looks up when Steve does and takes advantage of the distraction to shove Steve off where he’d been trying to pacify him. He stalks over with Steve running after him, but before he can get a word out, power returns to the gate and it slinks open.

“Nancy, let’s go!” Jonathan shouts, barely even stopping to look at Billy or Steve in his haste to jump back in the car.

She goes with him, sparing a worried look for Steve when she runs around the front of the car. They take off in a spray of rubble and shrieking tires as soon as the gate slides all the way open, and then Steve’s trying to reason with Billy again.

“Can you please just talk to me?”

 _“For what!?”_ Billy yells, and his voice breaks. He sounds like he can’t breathe. “You’re at your fucking monster factory! I did my part! And now I’m taking my sister, and I’m going the fuck home.”

“I don’t want to go,” Max objects, stepping forward.

Billy turns to look at her, and more than he looks angry or upset he looks… desperate _. Afraid._ He takes a big juddering breath. “Max, please.”

“Billy,” Steve tries, approaching Billy from behind and getting close enough to touch him before Billy whirls around, throwing a hand up to keep him at a distance.

 _“Stop.”_ His voice shakes, badly. “Just stop. I have to get her home.”

Steve’s voice gets gentle then. “Well, what are you gonna do, Billy? She doesn’t wanna go with you.”

Billy falls silent, shoulders heaving. Dustin can’t imagine what he looks like.

“Are you gonna fight me?” Steve asks, eyes soft, hands down at his sides.

Whatever Billy’s answer was going to be, he doesn’t get a chance to say it. The sound of engines revving kicks up behind them, and before any of them know what’s going on, Jonathan’s car comes flying back up the road. Everyone scatters to make way, all that tension dissolved in noise and chaos. The car’s going too fast for Dustin to get a good visual, but with all the seats filled up, Will and Mike could easily have been on-board.

Hop’s truck bursts through the opened gate a moment later with him behind the wheel and Bob the Brain riding shotgun. They yell for everyone to get in, and Dustin doesn’t need to be told twice.

He clambers inside after Max and Lucas and watches from the backseat while Billy and Steve jump into the Camaro. Billy guns in and tails Hop closely, spider-like shadows spilling out of the opened gates behind them into the surrounding woods.

They’re not spiders. _Fuck_ , how are there _so many of them?_

“Oh, shit,” Dustin says, swiveling around to face the front and sinking back into his seat.

“Yeah,” Bob sighs, twisting around to look at him. He smiles shakily. “Tell me about it.”


	13. Sister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kali never thought she would find herself going back to Hawkins, but she never thought she would see Jane again either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings for:  
> 1) Reflections on abuse and captivity (Hawkins Lab)  
> 2) Acknowledgement of manipulative or abusive tendencies and explicit conversations concerning abuse  
> 3) Multiple perspectives, but you knew that

The night they are meant to find and kill one of the men who aided in their captivity, Kali catches Jane in her room with a scarf tied around her eyes. A low frequency of static plays on the radio beside her bed, and already Kali knows better than to interrupt, so she doesn’t make a sound. She simply waits, untold sights and sounds dancing before Jane’s eyes.

Funny that they managed to guide her into this ability when it is a mirror of what they planted in Kali. Sights and sounds dancing across their eyes, open or closed. Like two halves of the same coin or a forest that appears one way in light and another after darkness falls. Funnier still to think that Kali would be in the light since of the two of them, it is Jane who shines brightly and who brings it with her, whatever else she carries and whatever danger calls out to her through the static.

She removes the blindfold, troubled look befalling her features. There is conflict in her eyes and worry in the hard line of her frown. Such a look should be entirely foreign to her. Such hardship should be an unknown quantity. Kali yearns to kill every person who had anything to do with teaching it to her.

Jane glances up, seeing her in the doorway, and that look of deep concern lightens with something startlingly close to hope. Her heart nearly bursts at the sight. It is so much more than Kali ever thought she would feel again. It’s the scope of all things Kali has lost in this life. The warmth in her eyes reflects the barometer long broken in Kali’s heart.

True north has never existed on Kali’s compass, but looking at Jane — and the way Jane sees her from first to last — rights the magnetic field at long last. Gravity is real when Jane looks at her, and a world exists where they are more than weapons.

Kali steps into the room properly and crosses to sit on the edge of the bed. Jane reaches for her hand automatically, and it is so much more than Kali ever thought she would feel again.

Surely a weapon wouldn’t feel this way. Surely an instrument of destruction wouldn’t _love_ this viciously.

Jane opens her mouth, but there are no words for what she means to convey. Kali holds her hand, ready to stay here all night if the moon and all her stars are what will give Jane the courage or the clarity to speak, or if, perhaps, Kali might.

There is a feeling in the air, and Kali was sensitive to it even before she saw the tension wreaking havoc over Jane’s face through the blindfold. There is a feeling of nearness, of anticipation, of something soon to happen that will solidify them a second time in amber. Kali knows. It is not strictly a learned talent, she doesn’t think. Not another twisted gift from the torturers at Hawkins Lab. She merely knows, sometimes, the way horses know ahead of a thunderstorm that the grasses will be made to drink the sky’s wrath.

They have found each other here in what could be termed their second life, and Kali has given her a task. It is the nature of things. It is what home has come to mean to her.

What else would a weapon ask of another weapon?

But they are sisters, too. Kali has never lost sight of that — she couldn’t, no matter where her sights had been set before Jane came back to her — but for all that she has been a sister longer than she has ever been anything, she has acted the weapon longer than any other role in her life. And she knows Jane has not.

Such a confusing thing, to feel almost at odds with oneself. For the want to clash bloodily with the need, and to be uncertain of which fire to feed when they have both kept her warm in their own ways. When they have both given her a reason to live.

So Kali knows. The moment of alchemical change will be upon them soon, and one of those fires will die, leaving her colder and farther from the light than she has ever been, but not just her.

Is this what people feel? People with regular lives and regular problems who are allowed to know a bond like this and keep it without the world shattering beneath their feet? Kali would not change Jane. For as long as she can remember, that power has been hers, but she would not have Jane any different than just as she is. Freed and empowered, yes, but hardened and honed as Kali’s had to be?

Want and need clashing, each trying to burn the other out. She doesn’t know. A second world lives at her fingertips, always, but the undeniable, infallible reality of Jane here with her… she could not improve upon it if she tried. They were stolen and poisoned and tortured and thrown into cages, but the pain of it stopped while this endures. Jane’s hand in hers endures. That bloom of recognition, of sameness, of _home_ endures.

At last, Jane tells her, “I have to go back.”

Kali cannot speak. She squeezes Jane’s hand in hers, remembering chilled electrodes and chirping monitors and the reptilian gleam of light catching on glasses and tiepins and clipboards. She knows what _he_ would do, what he _did_ do, when met with resistance.

This room suddenly feels so much like the hole with no windows, light, or sound. Like punishment. Like an expectation of compliance after something withheld has been restored. She shudders.

“Come with me.”

“What?” Kali asks, blinking, meeting Jane’s bright eyes with confusion. “Where?”

“Home,” she says, covering Kali’s hand so that she is held completely. “Come home.”

“I don’t have a home, Jane.”

 _“Home,”_ she repeats and lifts their hands emphatically. _“Our home.”_

“To your police chief.”

“He’ll understand.”

“Jane,” Kali begins, and now she is the one lost for words. She can’t keep Jane here if it is in her heart to fly from the cage, but she can’t follow. The chain around her ankle is of her own creation, and she sees that now with clarity that closes in a fist around her heart.

“You left,” Jane whispers, and Kali hears in it what she will not say: _You left me._ “Don’t make me.”

That moment she felt approaching, the resin rushing in to claim and preserve them in a single irreversible decision, descends, and Kali realizes her error. She has been preserved in amber ever since she escaped the lab. Life has bent her into a shape that will not iron out no matter what revisions she takes care to make.

She must stay, and Jane must go.

“We’ve made our choices, Jane. We can’t turn back the clock.”

“Not to turn back. To go forward. That’s a choice.”

“Oh?” Kali dabs at the corner of her eye, surely smearing the kohl there. “And what has all this been if not a choice?”

“ _Running,_ but we don’t have to anymore.”

Kali considers the logistics. This place is easily burned. Her acolytes will find a new enemy to rage against. There is no shortage of evils in the world to fight if she abandons her mission here, and this won’t have been the first time she’s had to walk away from a life. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s had to let Jane go either, though she’s not sure she will survive this separation a second time.

Jane is _everything,_ and the family she’s found and deemed worthy of her protection is _her_ everything. She wants to take Kali with her as part of that family.

What else could one sister ask of another?

“Come with me,” Jane says again, pulling their hands to her heart, so honest and so full of yearning, and Kali had the wrong way around, didn’t she?

The flame in perfect darkness is Jane’s part to play just like Kali’s part is to weave color and form and shadow over that which can be seen. Kali thrives in light because it is only then that the shadows she casts can be seen, and Jane moves through the darkness for the same reason.

They truly are two sides of the same coin. In all things, they are aligned, even in their differences.

Kali sighs and brings her other hand to Jane’s so they are holding on in every way that they can. She says, “What is it that waits for us when we go, Jane?”

For a moment she just stares, brown eyes wide and then glistening. She throws herself forward to wrap Kali in a tight embrace, crying, but the sort that finds its foundation in joy rather than pain.

“A monster,” she whispers, trembling and holding tight, “a door I opened, Will. Caught in between.”

“What will we do?” Kali asks, needing to know what will replace the paltry plans they have made to pursue this course of action instead.

“Fix what I did. Save him. Stay. Together.” She pulls away, tears streaked down her face, eyes searching Kali’s. “Come home.”

“Yes, Jane,” she answers, hoarse, overcome and overflowing. “We’ll go home.”

* * *

It is easier than she thought to disband their base of operations. Ultimately, it is nothing but brick and mortar and broken glass. Her merry band of misfits needs nothing more than a word. They have pledged themselves to her for debts bought with blood, and it is enough for her to release them. She doesn’t require anything else, nor does she offer it.

She and Jane aim to leave the following night, headed out of the coals into the mouth of an inferno.

Kali would not trade it. She will craft an ocean around them if that’s what it takes to keep them together this time around. Walking into hell is nothing. Standing in the fire is nothing.

Not when the fire she’s chosen to keep doesn’t lash and burn like the one fueled by vengeance.

A weight has lifted in her heart. That feeling of an axe hanging over her head has dissipated. They’re together, and they’re going. It feels nothing at all like her life of grifting and foraging. She’s never known how to be in the world without always being on her guard and looking over her shoulder, but with Jane at her side, she feels invincible.

They board a bus back to Indiana that drives through the night. Kali forges their fare and their meal ticket at the diner they stop in at for breakfast. A life of crime is still what she knows best, for better or for worse, though in this instance, it is decidedly for the better. Her growling stomach is certainly in favor of it, and Jane’s is as well.

She orders pancakes for herself and waffles for Jane. She wanted Eggo’s, but after the combined efforts of Kali and their waitress to patiently explain how much better handmade waffles are, she lets them put the order in. Jane eats every last bit of food on her plate.

Perfectly solemn but without complaint, she intones, “Not as good as Eggo’s.”

Kali can’t help but laugh. Jane is every bit as serious now as she ever was. Her eyes haven’t changed. They are at once grave and jaded, but imploring, too.

They weren’t allowed to be happy as children, and though Kali supposes they are children still, their lives are their own to govern now. They can be happy, and Kali can take some of the burden. She has done so for years for the most selfish reasons, so it will not be burden to do it now for someone she loves, and she loves Jane. Loves her automatically and searingly, _unchangeably_ , as fixed and known to her as the number tattooed into her skin.

But Kali’s love for her is also the love a tree has for the sun. Instinctive. A direction she must grow in because hers is the only life-giving path. The only one limned in warmth and light.

There isn’t a bus that will take them to the place Jane insists they need to go, so they hitchhike.

Kali keeps herself in between the driver and Jane, and she keeps an eye on the door lock always. It’s late in the evening when Jane squeezes her hand to alert their driver to pull over. Kali does her one better and summons a flashy, elaborate roadblock with a gaping, bottomless hole on the other side of it.

 _“What in the hell?”_ the man behind the wheel shouts, practically standing on the brake to bring the truck to a full stop.

Jane jumps out the opened door and Kali follows her through the trees to a cabin in the woods. She wraps her arms tighter around herself as they walk inside, looking around at the disarray in every direction. With the windows blown out, it is so cold inside. Jane sees her shivering and goes to a closet, digging around until she finds a jacket with fleece lining for Kali to wear. She trades it for the thinner one she brought from Chicago, immediately warming and relaxing under the warmth.

“Aren’t you cold?” Kali asks, rubbing her hands together.

Shrugging, Jane murmurs, “Used to it,” and slips away to fiddle with the radio. She dons a blindfold without any further explanation and sits on the floor.

Kali wanders over to the opened boxes on the couch, careful to be silent in her rummaging so that she won’t distract Jane from her efforts. The boxes contain documents from the lab, newspaper clippings of women alleging that their children were taken from them. One looks like Jane. The other looks like Kali. Phantom limbs cut from a tree with roots that will never truly be theirs, not anymore.

Among the closed boxes, there is one with the name Sara scrawled in black marker across one panel. Kali reaches for it and removes a small cap, worn soft from many washes and faded a dull sea foam green. She holds it closer to her face, smelling just the barest hint of strawberries and a stronger suggestion of dust. Kali roots around again and unearths a photograph of a girl with blue eyes that seem to fill her gaunt little face. Her smile is wide but tired. The man with his arms around her is a mountain, unsmiling, but using the strength he has and she lacks to hold her close. Kali looks at the cap in her hand and at the photo, a low thrum of understanding chilling her. She returns the items where she found them, careful not to disturb the rest of the box’s contents.

“Will,” Jane says over her shoulder, pulling off the blindfold and blotting the blood from her nose with her sleeve. “I know where we have to go.”

They trek back to the road where the man is still peering down the hole Kali left for him to puzzle over. She lifts the illusion as they emerge from the trees, and he scratches his head, looking around for evidence that what he saw was real.

“Excuse me,” Kali calls out, getting his attention.

He yells out in surprise and turns, blinking at them. “Did you — did you see that?”

“See what?” she asks, guiding Jane around to the door on the passenger’s side.

They get back into the truck, and after a long moment of testing out the road with his hands and feet both, the man climbs in behind the wheel. He shakes his head and turns the key.

“Where’d you girls say you were going?”

“Joyce Byers,” Jane tells him.

He must be from around here because he knows where to take them. Kali doesn’t bother him any longer with visions. He doesn’t need it. He’s extremely cautious for the remainder of the drive, even switching on his brights and staring intently at the road rather than trying to converse with them. Jane holds onto Kali’s hand as she did before, but rather than gesturing for her to do the talking, she speaks up on her own.

“Here is fine. Thank you.”

The man waits a moment for them to continue walking, and then he speeds away. Kali hopes they won’t need to hitchhike again from here as it doesn’t appear to be an area with high volumes of traffic.

Jane squeezes her hand as they take a shortcut through the trees. Kali looks to her, expectant.

“Dangerous,” Jane intones.

“So are we.”

Jane smiles, and the somber glint in her eyes takes on an edge that Kali likes immensely for how much it resembles pride. She squeezes her hand back.

As they clear the trees and step onto what looks like a dirt driveway, Kali hears it. Rustling, and screaming — that of people, and that of something inhuman that she has never heard before. Jane’s smile darkens into a snarl and her free hand balls up into a fist. Kali sees the creature then and almost loses her nerve. It wasn’t that she doubted Jane’s telling of events, but to have it before her very eyes is singularly terrifying.

The beast is monstrous, and it’s trying to get into the house, trying to hurt the ones Jane loves. Without pausing for encouragement, Jane throws out her hand, her fingers unfurling from the tight fist they’d made. The thing cries out sharply, and with a jerk of Jane’s hand, it goes flying through a window like a crumpled puppet.

She takes Kali’s hand again, and they listen in the silence for things moving in the dark. There’s nothing.

They walk up the driveway hand in hand. Kali watches Jane unlock the door and open it without setting foot on the porch. She glances at Kali, gauging her reaction, and nods, a question. Kali nods back in answer, and they step into the doorway.

Nearly every last person packed into the room looks up at them, lowering guns, a slingshot, a nightstick, and a bat with nails hammered through it. Kali watches their faces change from fear to relief or confusion or in the case of one boy, love. Jane is looking at him with the selfsame emotion in her eyes, so Kali registers this as acceptable, though she must admit to some reluctance.

She lingers in the doorway, scanning the crowd and trying to guess how she will fit amid so many new faces and unseen intentions. Among them, is the big man from the photograph. He doesn’t smile now either, though that seems to be more out of surprise than anything. He and the boy with love for Jane have their reunion while Kali keeps searching for a handhold.

There is a small woman flanked by a man and a tall boy who held on to protect her from the creature and have yet to pull away completely. There is a girl huddled next to two boys that look to be around Jane’s age. Closer to the door is a girl with a rifle aimed at the floor. To her immediate left is the boy with the bat, and right at her other shoulder is the tall girl with the nightstick. All each mark clear alliances at their most basic components, though they must be united in their fight to save the boy called Will.

Except then she spots him.

At the back of the room, collapsed into himself like a dying star, there’s another boy with nothing in his hands and no one at his side. Kali recognizes him. In spite of never having met him, she knows him.

She steps into the house and closes the door behind her, decided on a path and ready to see it through.

“El,” says the big man. “Who’s this?”

“Sister.”

The boy holding to her pulls away and bravely ignores his tears to say, “Whoa, you have a sister?”

“I’m Kali,” she says, holding out her hand to the big man while the boy and Jane slowly disentangle their arms. “You called her El.”

“Eleven, yeah,” the man mumbles, bewildered. He shakes Kali’s hand. “Jim Hopper. Sorry, did you say sister?”

“Eight,” Jane supplies, looking up at him with eyes so full of joy that Kali almost can’t breathe. She holds out her wrist, number-side up. “Eight!”

“Oh.” Jim takes his hand away, blinking. His face shifts with understanding. “ _Oh_.”

“Wait, so you have powers, too?” the boy asks. “Uh, sorry, I meant, hi. I’m Mike.”

“Hello, Mike, and I do, yes.”

“Holy shit. So you can move stuff, too?”

“Illusions,” Jane tells him. “Things that aren’t there.”

“Would you like a demonstration?” she offers gamely, never one to shy away from a bit of theatrics when it comes right down to it. “Just so you know what to expect?”

“Uh, yeah, all right,” Jim murmurs, backing away.

Kali holds up her hand and fills the room with luminous swaying flowers of every color she knows. It seems a safe enough image to give them, something that won’t startle them but that will get her point across all the same. A few of them leap back, but on the whole they take it in stride. She glances around at the faces peering back at her, then at the one that isn’t.

He’s still slouched at the table staring down at his hands. She stays where she is long enough to hear every name as it pairs with every face. As soon as introductions have been made and the group of them begins to make their way into the hallway, Kali slips away to join the boy sitting by himself. Jane watches her go but doesn’t try to stop her.

The boy with the bat — Steve — warily approaches the doorway and pokes his head in. He meets Kali’s eyes for a moment then tries to get the attention of the boy slumped at the table.

“We’re gonna be right down the hall, Billy. Okay?”

He doesn’t move, and there’s something haunted sticking to his stillness. Steve falters seeing it and sighs. The look on his face softens when he looks at Kali again.

“Don’t mind him. It’s been a long night.”

The girl Nancy touches his elbow and walks with him down the hallway with everyone else. That leaves Kali alone with Billy.

“Now would be the time to escape if you were of a mind to do so,” she tells him, mostly just aiming to get a reaction out of him, though she readily owns her willingness to conspire in jailbreaks of all sorts. “I can help you. They won’t know you’ve gone.”

He laughs, and the sound of it is not like a laugh. His eyes when he tips his head back to look at her are forlorn and very blue. He says, “I can’t,” which can only mean that she’s guessed correctly.

“Why not?”

“Because my sister’s here…” He stops, trailing off. As if it cuts him to do it, he corrects himself. “Stepsister.”

“My sister is here, too.”

“Yeah? Congratulations.”

“Why do you differentiate? You called her first your sister, and then your stepsister.”

“She’s not. _We’re_ not.”

“Neither am I my sister’s by blood,” she tells him. “But she is my sister, and I’m hers.”

A look of such conflict enters his face then. In his eyes, she sees severity, hope, and pain, a great deal of pain. He looks away then.

“Why won’t she let you leave?”

“Because she won’t come with me,” he mutters, rubbing his face with his hands. “And I can’t go without her.”

Kali knows the feeling, but she wonders if she’s misunderstanding him. “If that’s the case, why are you so determined to leave?”

He doesn’t answer, instead returning his attention to his hands in his lap. A weight seems to have latched itself to his shoulders, bringing them down into the shape of an overturned horseshoe. He reminds her of a runaway she once liberated from the back of an idling police car — a girl half-wild with fear with dirt smudged down one cheek and a speck of blood on her lip from biting it. Once they’d gotten clear of the police car, she’d been despondent, inconsolable at the inevitability of being returned to her family.

It’s the resignation that cinches the likeness. But she wonders, too. Is that the only thing?

“Is it what _you_ want? To go?”

“Doesn’t matter what I want,” he says, rising from the chair and digging a carton of cigarettes out of his pocket.

Steve walks into the room just as Billy’s trying to leave it. He stops short at the sight of him up on his feet and on a breath, says, “Billy.”

A look passes between them — a tender thing, very close to what passed between Jane and Mike when they saw each other at the door. It leaves Billy’s face first, like a hand crumpling up a clean sheet of paper.He ducks his head and shakes out a cigarette, brushing past Steve on his way out without another word.

“Steve, just let him go,” Nancy murmurs, catching his elbow to keep him from following Billy outside.

“Normally I might agree,” Barb says, cutting in quietly, “ _but normally_ there aren’t terrifying mutated dogs running around trying to eat people.”

Kali watches them from the table and notices movement through the front window over Steve’s shoulder. It must be Billy walking off the porch and crossing the yard. She stands, squinting, and gravitates toward the living room for a better look.

“I’ll come right back. Nancy, I know what this looks like, but he’s just… oh, shit.” Steve glances up at the flash of headlights through the window and breaks into a dead run for the door. He throws it open and runs outside, yelling, “Billy! Don’t go! _Billy!”_

The girl, Max, Billy’s sister, climbs up onto the couch and watches her brother drive away. Kali looks from her to Steve where he’s standing alone in the driveway. She watches him throw the bat on the ground and sit down in the dirt with his head in his hands. When he doesn’t come back into the house, Barb and Nancy go to join him. Nancy sits in the dirt to his right and places her hand on his shoulder. Barb takes up his other side, the baton at the ready in her lap.

Kali watches them through the window, though she can’t hear what’s being said. Max twists to sit sideways on the couch, and the distracted look on her face conveys well enough to Kali where her thoughts are. As kind as her blue eyes are, everything about her posture screams discomfort and regret.

“So you’re… really Eleven’s sister?”

“Yes.”

“Wow, I’ve heard a lot about her. Tonight’s my first time meeting her, though.”

“It’s your first time meeting me as well,” Kali says, making herself be gentle in spite of her curiosity.

Max smiles shakily. It’s a very good effort, all told, but Kali’s seen too much not to know perfectly well the exact shape and density of the pressure bearing down on her heart. The slope of her shoulders is the same as Billy’s was, and the blue of her eyes are so similar, too.

“Seemed like nobody knew about you before tonight,” Max ventures, glancing out the window where Steve’s pulling at his hair.

“I was a secret very well-kept from them, and from Jane.”

“Did you know about her this whole time?”

“I did.”

“Why wait all this time to come back then?” She closes her eyes, mortified. “No, I’m — _I’m sorry._ That’s rude of me. I don’t mean it that way. Just, it must’ve been hard to know that she was out there somewhere but not being able to do anything about it.”

“It was hard. For a long time, I thought she was lost to me. Believing it cut me open.”

Max looks away, sniffling. Her forehead crinkles, and she stares down at her hands — Kali wonders if she learned this habit from her brother.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, curiouser and curiouser.

“He’s gonna get in trouble because of me,” she says in a strangled whisper. “And I — I _promised_ he wouldn’t, but he never trusts me. Maybe he shouldn’t.”

“You’re being very hard on yourself,” Kali tells her, trying to soothe her worry because pressing too hard drove Billy to run, and she doesn’t want Max to run. “I think he has every reason to trust you, but why would we be in trouble because of you?”

“His dad. My — my stepdad.”

“Stepsister,” Kali parrots, still finding it strange, this distinction.

“What? Oh. Yeah, he’s my stepbrother.”

The gesture seems so unnecessary, except to create distance through the use of a technicality. She tried to communicate as much to Billy, but she’s not sure she actually succeeded in getting through to him. Saying it again to Max feels equally important.

“Jane — or El, as you know her — is not my family by blood or name, but we were raised together. We endured the same horrors and lived to see the other side of them. I love her. She’s my sister.”

That’s what Billy said. _My sister_.

Max seems to share her brother’s ability for hearing Kali’s unspoken thoughts because she flinches and looks away. After a moment, she runs off. Kali stays seated, looking out through the window again where Barb and Nancy are still sitting with Steve on the ground. Jane walks over and touches her hand.

“Problem?”

“Yes,” Kali tells her. “I made it worse.”

Jane frowns. “Why?”

“I meant to help.”

“Billy. Should I find him?”

“No, Jane.” She thinks about what she said to him before he fled. “If he wants to come back, then he will.”

“Come back,” she says, nodding. “Like we came back.”

Kali smiles. “Yes, Jane.”

“Kid,” Jim calls, looking up from a map. “Be ready to go here in a minute.”

“Okay.” Turning back to Kali, she explains, “We’re going to close the gate. Do you want to go with us or stay here?”

She hesitates, unsure. She would go with them if she thought it might make a difference, but she doesn’t understand what they’re fighting here. The hellhound lying dead on the floor is the extent of what she knows about the evils they’re up against tonight. The front door opens before Kali can work out her answer. Nancy walks in with Steve right behind her and Barb right behind him. He looks at Kali for just a second as he passes, but he doesn’t say a word to her.

Kali knows she’s to blame for the tight grimace on his face, and she regrets it. These are Jane’s friends, and Kali has caused them harm. She wants to make it right. It’s what a good sister would do.

“I’ll stay here. Maybe I can help.”

Jane nods and closes Kali in a hug. She murmurs, “I’ll come back.”

“I know, and I’ll be here when you do.”

She pulls away, hugs each of her friends again, and leaves with Jim. Bob carries Will outside wrapped in a blanket. Kali wanders out onto the porch to watch with everyone else, glancing over when someone sidles up next to her.

“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry you have to go through all of this with us. It was Kali, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Joyce nods, distracted, watching Jonathan scramble into the backseat of a car and motion for Bob to load Will in next to him. Between the two of them, they get the bundle of a boy sitting upright in the middle seat.

“Will he be all right?” Kali asks.

“Yes,” Joyce says, all steel and strength and certainty and — _and love_. “He’s gonna be fine.” She seems to remember herself a moment later, noticing Kali’s eyes on her. Softening, she adds, “I don’t know when we’ll be back, so there’s food in the kitchen if you get hungry, and we have extra coats and blankets in the linen closet if you need them.”

Kali crosses her arms in front of her chest, feeling the borrowed jacket, far too big on her, whisper with the motion. Joyce smiles, kindly and endeared, somehow, at whatever she sees when she looks at Kali in her smudged makeup and ill-fitting clothes. She doesn’t have time to feel the usual smallness that comes with being weighed and measured in a glance before Joyce presses a hand to her shoulder, smiling still.

“Anything you can’t find, Mike will know where to look for it.” She steps off the porch, and Kali steps with her. “I promise the house isn’t always this much of a mess.”

Masking her bewilderment over this display of kindness, Kali says, in a parody of innocence, “I’m not sure what you mean about the house being a mess.”

Joyce glances through the opened door at her immaculate living room and smothers a startled laugh with her hand. It’s nice to see her laugh, Kali decides. She drops the illusion, returning the hectic drawings to their rightful places all over the floor and walls.

“I’ve lived in squalor, Joyce. This is nothing. Thank you, and please don’t apologize.”

An expression comes over Joyce’s face then that is best described as yearning. To do what, Kali doesn’t know. To take away the past and whatever hardships it carried, perhaps? To protect Kali? What a quaint idea. Laughable. And if she’s honest with herself, completely honest, not an unpleasant thought.

Bob honks the horn, and Joyce jumps. Kali goes with her to the car so that she won’t feel so torn about walking away from her. Nancy and Barb hug briskly before the latter climbs into the backseat on the right side. Jonathan pauses to hug Nancy, too, and then he goes around to get in on the remaining side, leaving Will propped up in between him and Barb.

Joyce gives Kali one more smile and gets in the car. They drive away, and then it is just Kali and Nancy standing alone in the driveway. Nancy sighs and rubs at her forehead. Kali rocks back on her heels.

“I didn’t mean to make him leave,” she says.

The surprise on Nancy’s face is genuine. She frowns. “If anyone made Billy leave, it was Billy. Trust me, he was waiting for an excuse to get out of here, and you gave it to him. Don’t worry, okay? It’s not your fault.”

They walk back inside together, and Nancy gravitates toward her brother. Left to her own devices, Kali knows what she has to do. She finds Max on the couch with Lucas and Dustin, both of whom look up distrustfully at her approach. Clearly she made a bit of an impression earlier. Unfortunate, but not unsalvageable.

“I’m sorry. I only meant to understand, but clearly I overstepped. I haven’t had much practice with boundaries before now. Living on the run, and all.”

“On the run?” Lucas echoes, narrowing his eyes at her so that Max won’t have to.

“How else do you imagine escapees from secret branches of your government live?”

“Oh, yeah,” he mumbles, allowing it _._

“Wait, so you’re like a fugitive?” Dustin asks, and his somewhat dreamy tone is difficult to quantify except it gets easier at the flatly unimpressed look Lucas gives him. Straightening, Dustin stammers, “I-I mean… _you’re like a fugitive?”_

Lucas sighs and shakes his head, muttering, “You do this _every time,_ Dustin. You realize that, right?”

“What do you mean I do this every time?” he squawks. “I can’t help it that my type is suave and smart! It’s a good type to have!”

Max squirms out from between the two of them, rolling her eyes all the while, and takes up Kali’s elbow to walk her into the kitchen. “Boys are so annoying.”

Kali snorts and holds Max’s hand in place, remembering how much of a comfort Joyce’s reassuring touch had been. It’s nothing like the room with no windows. It’s nothing like selling dreams to lost causes. It feels wholly genuine and true. It feels good.

“I didn’t mean to upset you before. Are you all right?”

Max bites her lip and shrugs. “I’m fine. I just… feel bad.”

“For your brother?” Kali waits for her to make the correction, and when she doesn’t, she continues, “Because of his father?”

Max withdraws, and that is an answer all on its own. A fearful boy and his frightening father. She might’ve guessed. She would have, if Billy hadn’t noticed her feeling her way toward the answer and made his exit before she could arrive to it.

Cold fury spikes beneath her skin, sharper than any regret or sadness she’s felt tonight. Kali understands anger, and she understands men who haven’t earned the right to be called fathers.

“The man Jane called a father taught us to him fear, too,” she murmurs, continuing when Max’s only response is to grow very pale. “It was worse for us if we fought, but generally, it didn’t matter what we did. He would take his due, one way or another. Is this the way with Billy’s father?”

Shuddering and wiping at her eyes, Max takes a breath to steady herself. She seems to struggle with the decision whether to tell Kali or not, but ultimately, she does. It comes out on a breath. “Yeah.”

The pantry door snicks shut, and there’s Steve crushing an empty pudding cup in his fist. He looks from Kali to Max then roots around under the sink for a trashcan.

“ _Oh, my God, Steve_ ,” Max hisses, scrubbing furiously at her face. “Were you creeping _this whole time?”_

 _“I’m hungry._ The closest I’ve been to food all day was the raw meat earlier.”

Kali watches his face and the casual unaffectedness of his expression. He’s not surprised at anything he’s heard, but there is a rigidity to his shoulders that wasn’t there before and a stoniness in his face that matches the galvanizing anger buzzing in Kali’s blood.

 _“Ugh, God,”_ Max groans, storming out into the living room.

“Are there any more of those left?” Kali asks.

“Yeah, lemme see.” Steve circles back to the pantry. “Chocolate or vanilla?”

“Chocolate, please. Thank you.”

He hands her a pudding cup proudly labeled _Snack Pack_. She tries a few drawers until she finds a spoon. Steve leans against the kitchen counter while she eats. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair.

“I’m sorry he left.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Me, too.”

“If he wants to come back, he will.”

“Yeah.” He puts more of his weight on the counter, tucking his chin into his chest. He nods, seemingly to himself, and whispers, “Yeah.”

Kali eats the rest of her pudding cup. Steve stays rooted to the spot and doesn’t make a sound, even after she tosses her trash and leaves the kitchen.

She’s curious about the gate and Will’s illness and the mangled dead thing Mike’s trying to enlist help with loading into the fridge. He allows himself to be distracted from his quest to preserve the corpse in order to lay out the facts as he knows them, which are as follows: Jane opened the gate because of their bastard creator, monsters spilled out of it, and one of them latched onto Will. Now they have to expel the parasite so that Jane can close the gate and kill the creatures.

“That’s what this map is,” Mike explains, gesturing expansively at the drawings with both hands. “There are Upside Down tunnels all over Hawkins. It’s like their hub. The lab tried to torch the nest, but the Mind Flayer’s attached to Will, so the fire just hurt him instead of killing it.”

“And how will they remove the Mind Flayer?”

“Oh, yeah, you weren’t there,” Mike mumbles. “They’re gonna draw the Mind Flayer out by making Will’s body uninhabitable.”

“Like smoking out a wasp’s nest,” Nancy adds.

Kali nods. It’s an apt comparison. This Mind Flayer sounds like a pestilence of the stinging variety.

The agency responsible for Will’s predicament created hers and Jane’s, so Kali is all too familiar with the way these things tend to go. She knows what it is for men in white coats to choose destruction when it is someone else’s life on the line and not their own, but these people sound determined to save Will, and she hopes they’ll succeed.

“We should be out there,” Mike says, fidgeting restlessly with his hands. “Don’t you think, Nancy? As soon as they get close to the gate, the lab’s gonna be swarming with demodogs. You saw how many there were. They almost killed Bob.”

“You want to go to the lab?”

“ _No_. That would be stupid. I wanna go to the tunnels.”

 _“That’s not stupid?”_ Steve asks from the couch. He’s spinning his bat on the floor between his knees. “Even if we do go down there, you _just_ said torching those things hurt him before. You wanna do that again?”

“Of course not! But they’re gonna get it out of him any minute now, and when they do, that’s when we burn the motherfuckers.”

“Mike,” Nancy chides.

“You were thinking it!”

She looks at the ceiling, arms crossed, and clicks her tongue. “It’s not a bad plan, but we don’t have a way to get out there unless Billy comes back.”

Mike groans, “So we’re at _Billy Hargrove’s_ mercy. Great.”

“I don’t see how that’s our biggest problem here,” Steve says, getting to his feet and pacing. “If we do go down to the tunnels, those dogs’ll come straight for us. There’s no way we’d get out in time.”

“Why would that matter?” Nancy asks slowly, swinging a knowing look over at Kali. “If they can’t see us, it’d be like we weren’t there at all.”

They look at Kali, and she thinks, _I can help them._

And that had been Jane’s reason for coming back, hadn’t it? That they needed her, and that it was okay for them to need her because she could help them.

Kali can help, too. She can help them help Jane.

Headlights shine through the window. A blue Camaro idles in the driveway and then shuts off, the lights going dim as the engine dies. Steve glances out the window for a long moment. The look on his face is… complicated. It’s the same as when he looked at Billy in the kitchen, but it’s guarded now and limned with the same ferocity that was in Jane’s face when she killed the dog.

Kali understands. How painful, to carry a love like that.

“Steve,” Nancy says, and doesn’t say anything else.

He takes his eyes off the car just long enough to meet her concerned gaze. He tries for a smile, but it doesn’t touch his eyes. “Let me handle this? Please?”

She watches him for a moment, not liking the request, but she thaws, maybe seeing something in his face. Steve nods and gets his hand on the door.

“Everybody sit tight. Nancy’s in charge.”

“Till you get back?” Mike asks, alternating between staring out the window and over at Steve.

“No, Nancy’s in charge,” Steve says, opening the door and stepping outside. “Full stop.”

He pulls the door firmly shut behind him, bat in hand. Kali doesn’t fault him for going out armed, what with the monsters lurking out in the night. She moves toward the window, but she’s not as fast as Max and her friends who pile onto the couch to watch. Nancy moves closer, too, standing behind Mike for a better view while Kali watches over the top of Max’s head.

Billy doesn’t get out of the car even as Steve approaches. He has one arm dangling out of the window and seems to be staring out blankly through the windshield. Even with the window cracked, it’s impossible to tell if they’re speaking at all.

Steve stops a good couple feet away from the car, out of Billy’s reach and out of range of the door, too. Billy’s arm hanging out of the window doesn’t move. Finally, he drops his head back against the seat to look up at Steve. Whatever he sees in Billy’s face — and Kali can only imagine, after everything she’s seen in it — he crosses the rest of the way to the car and leans the bat up against the door. He places his hand on the window, and Billy tucks his arm back inside.

“I swear to God, Billy Hargrove,” Nancy murmurs under her breath, waiting just like the rest of them to see what Billy’s next move will be.

The next move is Steve’s, though. He bends at the waist and rests his arm against the open window. Kali watches his hand dip just below where they can see, right around where Billy’s hand might be.

She straightens out and waves her hand. A wall of trees rises up between them.

No matter how badly Billy wanted to be invisible earlier, the need to be seen is always the greater hunger of the two. She knows this. She recognizes it. Nancy glances curiously in her direction, but she doesn’t protest like the kids on the couch do.

“Have they always been like that?” Lucas asks, turning around to face the front. “Y’know…?”

“For the past few weeks, yeah,” Max replies, like it’s not a big deal.

“I didn’t even know they were friends,” Mike marvels. “They don’t _seem_ like they’d be friends.”

“He grows on you,” Dustin tries, wincing at himself. “At least I think he does.”

“Whatever, Dustin,” Max fires back. “He fought the dogs, too.”

“I’m not saying he didn’t!”

“He did kinda pull a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the way to the lab, though,” Lucas mumbles, as if it’s been on his mind, but he hasn’t wanted to mention it. “ _That_ was scary.”

“He didn’t mean it,” Max mumbles. Not a second later, she sighs noisily. “I know what that sounds like, and I’m not giving him a free pass or saying you shouldn’t hate it when he gets like that — because _I hate it_ when he gets like that — but you can’t tell me you’ve never said or done something shitty because you were scared.”

Kali watches the boys’ faces change. Mostly she sees regret. There’s a flicker of guilt over Nancy’s, too.

“He’s a jerk. I’m not arguing that, but the rest of it, you don’t understand.”

There are things Kali would say if she could, but everything Max shared with her was told in confidence. She suspects Billy would detest it if she knew his secrets, so she can’t justify repeating what she’s learned of him.

She steps out of the way to make room for Max when she climbs off the couch, just about sparking with all that protective, righteous anger she carries. How lucky for Billy, that she loves him as much as she does. Kali wonders if he knows. She wonders if he has any idea how loved he is and wagers probably not before making to follow Max into the kitchen, wanting to provide comfort if she can.

Maybe another Snack Pack, too, while they’re waiting for the boys to get back. It’s been a long night.

* * *

Steve keeps his distance at first. He’s not sure what kind of mood Billy’s in after taking off earlier. They’re figuring out how to talk through these things, but a lot of it leaves Steve feeling pretty baffled most of the time.

It’s not until Billy drops his head back and look at him that Steve knows he came back to apologize. He sighs, closes the distance, and leans the bat up against the car.

“Hey, Billy,” he says, and he feels like he’s been saying Billy’s name all night.

“Hey, Steve,” he answers, voice thick and coming from the back of his throat. He tucks his arm into the window and clears his throat. “You come here often?”

He finds Billy’s hand on the other side of the opened window, musing, “Only when the world’s ending, babe.”

Billy looks from their hands to Steve’s face and then past him at the house, confusion falling over his face like a cloud. Steve turns to look over his shoulder, not seeing the house for the, well, trees. He tips his head back trying to see to the tops, but they’re the really tall kind that stretch up to the sky and never stop.

“That’s a hell of a trick,” he murmurs, turning his attention back to Billy. He pauses at the sight of him, not understanding for a long moment why Billy’s cheeks are wet. Steve reaches around for the handle on the door and pops it open on the first try. “Billy, what’s wrong?”

His face is turned away, but he lets Steve coax him halfway out of his seat. He looks okay, apart from the tears. Not like dogs came after him while he was off on his own or like he caught a case of what Will has. Steve can’t help but touch him just to be sure, though. The back of his neck, his shoulders, his arms, his hands. Everywhere he’s wanted them since the junkyard. Billy’s always so skittish letting Steve near him in public, especially if they’re alone together, but he doesn’t have to worry about that now. Not with Kali’s Houdini trees keeping them hidden.

“Billy.”

He shakes his head, covering his face with his hands until Steve pulls them away one after the other. Strangled, still crying, he whispers, “I’m sorry.”

“Okay. Hey, I forgive you, don’t cry. Don’t cry, it’s okay.”

Billy rubs at his face again, trying not to sniffle too loudly, and all the while, there’s a singular emotion wreaking havoc on his face. Not fear or anger or regret, but shame, and why is that so much worse? He says, “I yelled at you. I pushed you.”

Steve remembers, but he hadn’t been afraid then, and he’s not afraid now either. He flexes his fingers against Billy’s to lace them together, tracing circles in Billy’s knuckle. Thinks about the blank look of horror in Billy’s face outside the lab. _Are you gonna fight me?_

“Did you… I mean were you…” Steve stops, looking at Billy for help and only seeing more of that panic, like he might run again if Steve’s not careful. “Were you hoping I’d push you back?”

His face crumples, but he doesn’t make a sound. He tries to take his hand out of Steve’s, but he doesn’t try very hard and Steve won’t let go of him. This close he can feel Billy trembling, and God, he doesn’t understand, but he’s starting to, and it makes his heart feel like it’s ripping in half. He won’t know anything for sure until Billy flat out tells him, but enough of the pieces have come together that Steve can guess. What Max said to Kali in the kitchen, how Billy fell apart over the curfew thing, that scar in his cheek he all but _told Steve_ his dad gave him.

Why else would Billy have been so afraid earlier? Why else would he work so hard to get someone, anyone, punish him if not to make it hurt less when his dad finally got his turn? Steve feels a little sick at the thought, at the irony of Billy trying to get Steve to hit him just like Steve had been angling for the same thing from him on Halloween.

“Billy,” he sighs, winding an arm around his neck. “Come here. Come on.”

He hesitates, but once he registers that Steve’s hugging him, he crashes into him like a house caving in on itself. He’s still shaking like a leaf, and he’s still crying, though he doesn’t make a sound.

“Look, this thing with your dad and the curfew, I know it’s not about me, and I was never mad about it. I’m on your side, and so is Max, but the rest of those kids in there? They don’t know it’s not about them when you explode like that. To them it’s just scary, and it puts you back to being that same asshole on Halloween that they were right to run from. It’s like you try to make everything your fault so you can control it when people treat you like shit.”

He leans back a bit when Billy pulls away. An astonished, seen look crosses his face, and Steve takes a moment to stare, baffled that he’s the one who made him look like that. The wonder passes when he realizes in the next moment that the shame’s gone away. For now, at least.

“You’re right,” Billy murmurs, dropping his gaze to stare at Steve’s hand in his. “I don’t know how you know that, but you’re right.”

“Wasn’t hard,” Steve says lightly, teasing him, trying to make him smile. “You’re kind of a control freak.”

Billy laughs, just a little, a tiny, strained sound. It warms Steve right through the night chill sinking under his clothes.

“Is it really better to trick yourself into thinking you deserve it?”

“’S not a trick if I do deserve it,” Billy mutters, wiping one last time at his face.

“Well, I’m telling you you don’t,” Steve quips back, soft, so soft, because he can still see how poised to run Billy is, and he desperately doesn’t want him to leave. “Fool yourself all you want, but I don’t buy it.”

“Is that so?” Billy asks, finally sounding more like himself. He drops his hand back into his lap, back into Steve’s waiting grasp, and even if they weren’t tucked away in a kind of snow globe of Kali’s making, it’s pretty obvious he’d have eyes for no one but Steve right now.

“Yeah, that’s so. Now are you gonna come back inside or what?”

Billy leans his temple against the seat and looks up at the trees still surrounding them. Quietly, without looking at Steve, he says, “Maybe I should just go home.”

“ _No,_ fuck that. I’m not sending you away. Nobody is. Just come in with me. It’s fine. Actually,” he adds, faltering when he remembers.

“What? Actually, what?”

“Uh, we might need your car. Actually.”

Billy snorts and starts to climb out. “End of the world stuff, Steve?”

“Well, yeah,” Steve admits with a laugh, edging out of the way to make room for Billy. He bumps the bat with his foot and it rolls under the car. “Whoops.”

“How’d you ever get to be captain of the basketball team with those feet?” Billy says, playing now. He tosses his keys to Steve and drops down to root around under the car. “Never knew a clumsier jock, I swear.”

“Careful with the nails,” Steve warns, dropping down next to him. He gets a look while Billy feels around and says, “Over to the right. Yeah, you got it.”

Billy hands it over, and Steve pockets his keys so he won’t drop those, too. He looks up at the trees, wondering if getting closer will make them disappear, or if they’ll be able to walk through them. They look solid. Steve’s never seen trees this big. He glances over at Billy to get his opinion and pauses, the question still on his lips. Yawning and with his hair starting to frizz out at the ends, Billy looks like a lion. A sleepy one.

“You good?” Steve asks, smiling.

“Huh? Yeah. Shut up,” he mumbles, yawning again. He rubs at his eye with a knuckle.

“Come on, Billy,” he says, holding his hand out, and his stomach flutters when Billy takes his hand without a second thought. He looks up at the trees again, thinking.

“Best way’s always through,” Billy tells him, bumping Steve’s shoulder and pulling him along.

So they go through. Together.

* * *

There’s a clattering at the door. Kali blinks and lifts the illusion, furrowing her eyebrows at the resulting crash. Steve’s muffled voice comes through a second later.

 _“There it is!”_ He opens the door and wags a finger at Kali. “Very cool.”

“Thank you.”

Billy comes in behind him and locks eyes with her right away. He glances over at the couch full of kids, at Nancy, and back at Kali. He looks down, perhaps in an attempt to hide the redness in his eyes.

“I’m Billy, by the way.”

“I’m Kali,” she says, smiling. “I’m sorry about earlier. I just wanted to know more about you.”

Steve looks up sharply from where he’d been zipping his backpack up around the bat. Kali rolls her eyes at him, but she doesn’t say what she’s thinking out loud. She knows it would just embarrass him _and_ probably send Billy running a second time, which she doesn’t want. Nancy notices the looks passing in all various directions and snorts, turning away at the last second and covering her mouth. Billy glances blearily in her direction but doesn’t manage to look right at her.

“Anyway,” Steve says, standing up and digging into his pocket to produce a set of car keys. “We got wheels, so if we’re going, let’s go.”

Oblivious, Mike jumps up from the couch. “Finally! Let’s _burn_ this bitch!”

“What the fuck, Harrington,” Billy mutters, sounding beyond tired.

“You have your radio, right?” Lucas asks.

Dustin removes it from his backpack and brandishes it for them all to see. He says, “Barb’s gonna radio Hop when the Mind Flayer’s been successfully booted from Will’s body. After that, we torch the sons of bitches.”

Raggedly, Billy groans, “What the _fuck_ , Harrington.”

“Billy, please don’t take this the wrong way,” he says in an aside that everyone can hear. “But I think you should sit this one out.”

“Rad,” he mumbles, slinking back in the direction of the kitchen just for Steve to catch him by the wrist.

“Uh, no. No, buddy, over here.” He walks Billy over to the couch and points vaguely at Mike. “Find me a pillow and a blanket, would you?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, Wheeler. Or would you rather we bring him with us? There are barely enough seats as it is.”

Mike takes one look at Billy’s glazed, exhausted face and bolts into the hallway before jogging back a moment later with items from the linen closet Joyce was telling Kali about before. He tosses everything into Max’s waiting arms and runs right out the door with Lucas, Dustin, and Nancy without looking back once. Kali lingers behind, waiting while Max stuffs a pillow under Billy’s head. She leaves him with Steve to join Kali in the doorway as soon as he’s situated.

“You’ll be safe here, okay? Don’t go anywhere,” Steve tells him.

Billy squirms under the blanket, mumbling, “Don’t scratch my car, and take care of my sister, goddamn it.”

Kali’s standing close enough that she can hear Max’s stuttered intake of breath looking back at the bundle of blankets and messy curls on the couch. She takes Kali’s hand when it’s offered, maybe to keep herself from falling.

“You got it, sweetheart,” Steve replies, grinning, and it’s only Billy, Max, and Kali who are around to hear it.

When they get into Billy’s car, Max is still holding onto Kali’s hand. Nancy and Steve are in the front, and the rest of them are crammed into the backseat like clowns in a toy car. Steve pulls away from the house and down the winding road. All the lights in the house behind them have been turned off except for a single dim bulb in the kitchen, leaving Billy with enough light to know where he is but enough darkness to sleep, and Kali hopes he does.

She hopes Joyce gets the wasps out of her son, and she hopes Jane closes the gate. She hopes for these things because on the other side of them is when life can happen again. For her and Jane, for Billy and Max, for Will and Joyce…

Any life — but especially a happy life — on the other side of disaster is what Kali wants. It’s what she wants for anyone who has known chaos more than they’ve known peace.

 _And for those who’ve stolen peace_ , Kali muses, _they’ll have some of that_ ** _chaos_** _back, and they’ll have it back tenfold._

These are to be her friends, after all. It’s no burden to be dangerous for them when she’s been dangerous for herself almost as long as she’s been able to speak. It’s what Jane does, and it’s what a good sister would do.

 _I can help them_ , Kali thinks. _They need me, and I can help them_.

She wonders if it’s wrong to be excited at the prospect.


	14. If You’re Gonna Be a Bear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the gate closed, Hop’s got other things to worry about. Mainly, somehow he’s walking away from the whole ordeal with _two_ overpowered teenage girls in his care. At this point, why not? Real life is already so goddamn strange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) Mentions of domestic abuse and referenced homophobia  
> 2) Disaster Bi Steve Harrington trying his best  
> 3) Kali being kind of feral and perfect

El fights like hell to close the goddamn gate under Hawkins Lab.

Hop carries her back out to the truck after, astonished and not for the first time at how small she is. Kid’s got enough power to level a city block if she was of a mind to do it, and it’s not like he didn’t know. He’s seen pieces of it in the way she’s slammed doors in his face or blown windows out with the anger behind a scream.

She’d put supernovas to shame if one ever got the nerve to step up to her, but somehow, for all that, she swims in his arms. Just like Sara used to, even before the end came.

Holding her always meant having everything that mattered and ever _would_ matter to him bundled up so close to his heart. Like every time she was in his arms, he could feel the future and the weight of all her someday-choices. Things she’d say, evolutions in the language of her laughter, newer and newer reasons behind her tears. But there never were new reasons after the diagnosis, and even as she got smaller instead of bigger, even as the hope of a future — any future — shrank further and further into impossibility, he could still feel how much there was in her to be held.

So much love coming out, and so much more that he couldn’t help but give back, even when she couldn’t anymore. He loves her always because nothing could ever touch what he has for his little girl. But he loves El, too, in a way he thought he was done loving other people. She’s his daughter, and when he holds her he feels the same painful ache for more time that he did with Sara.

He doesn’t know what’s in store for tomorrow or how many more of them they’ll have together, but he wants as many as he can get. He wants to keep El safe and happy, and he wants to show her that there’s more for her in the world than nightmares and cracked doors into hell and goons done up in tactical gear. She deserves for there to be more than that, after everything.

She’s out cold for the duration of the drive back to Joyce’s. Hop has half a mind to take her straight back to the cabin, but he knows the first thing she’s gonna do upon waking is ask about the girl.

Jesus Christ, the girl. Kali. _Eight_.

When he thinks about it, he did read about another kid in the files when he was chasing down leads on El’s mom. In hindsight, he’s not surprised El was able to track her down. He knows that’s kind of her M.O., and if anything, Hop’s the reason she was able to do it. If he didn’t want her to go digging, he’d’ve been better off keeping the pictures far away from where she could get her hands on them.

Kali. The newspaper clipping gave a family name, he’s pretty sure, but damn if he can remember it now.

He has to admit that he’s curious. Anyone in their right mind would be, but Hop, particularly, is in a pretty unique situation here. The short of it is that he knows Kali won’t want to be anywhere but glued to El’s side for the foreseeable future, and that means she’s gonna be around. As someone who’s lost family, Hop get it. He’s not contesting their right to hold on to each other, but just from a practical standpoint, the odds aren’t in his favor here. One souped up kid on the run living under his roof was a lot to handle, but two? And both of them stronger than he could ever hope to be? Shit.

El at least looks and sounds like she could be his kid. Kali, on the other hand. Hop’s gonna have to be careful. Even more so than he’s tried to be with El.

He pulls into Joyce’s driveway and sees right away that she’s beaten him back to the house. That’s good. He hopes Will’s asleep in his own bed bundled up in sweaters and blankets. Kid deserves a solid twelve hours of rest if he wants it.

The truck plunges into silence the second he kills the engine, and El blinks awake before he can do anything about it.

“Will,” she says.

Hop follows her sightline to Joyce’s car and nods. He doesn’t have time to reply before she’s throwing her door open and running up the driveway to the door. Unlike the last time when she’d let herself right in, she knocks. Hop jogs up to the porch and tries the doorknob, charmed at her restraint. It’s open, so he waves for her to go on in. There’s a clatter in the kitchen at their arrival, but Hop’s only got eyes for the rumpled up kid passed out on Joyce’s couch like he damn well belongs there.

Joyce pokes her head into the living room and comes out right away to wrap El in a hug. She makes only the slightest effort to keep her voice down, and Hop can see why.

Billy Hargrove doesn’t so much as twitch. Even when Hop shuts the door with a resounding snap, he might as well be dead for all that he doesn’t move a single solitary muscle. Hop gestures with his hand but doesn’t attempt to talk over Joyce where she’s still fussing over El.

“Oh, sweetie, you did it. You did it!”

“Will is okay?”

“He’s fine. He’s in his room if you want to see him.”

El lets go of Joyce and turns to look expectantly at Hop. He’s still distracted, so he just waves his hand for her to go on without him.

“Kali,” she says, looking at Joyce before she goes off to find Will. “Mike?”

“They’re not here, but they should be back soon. I think they took Billy’s car somewhere.”

“Yeah, about that.”

“Hop — ” Joyce waves for him to come into the kitchen with her while El heads in the direction of Will’s room. “Just let him rest.”

“How long’s he been like that?”

“Since we got back? I don’t know. Looks like he needs it.”

“That’s not your job.”

“Oh.” She flaps her hand at him like he’s a fly she’s shooing away. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t come in here after the night we just had and act like you need to save me from some kid. He’s drooling into his shoulder, Hop. He’s not gonna hurt anybody. Besides, you saw him earlier. Bob knocked over the umbrella stand helping Will in through the door, and he didn’t budge. Obviously he’s exhausted.”

“I’m just saying, if you want him gone, I’ll get him gone.”

He sees a flash of light cut across her face and turns around. From where he’s standing at the mouth of the kitchen he can see a blue Camaro pull up beside his truck. Joyce goes back to stirring the soup on the stovetop, and Hop takes that as the dismissal that it is. He ducks into the hallway and follows the low hum of voices to Will’s room.

“The others are back, kid.”

“Hey, Hop,” Will rasps, smiling faintly.

Hop’s chest constricts. He smiles back and steps into the room, sparing a glance each for Bob, Jonathan, and Barb where they’re stationed at the foot of his bed and close at hand on the floor. El looks searchingly from Will to Hop then back to Will.

“I’ll come back,” she intones, taking Will’s hand for a moment.

Will nods, though it looks like it costs him. His smile is weak but genuine. “Okay.”

“How do you feel?” Hop asks when El leaves the room and clears that spot next to Will on the bed.

“Hungry,” Will tells him through a breathless grin.

Hop grabs his hand just like El did. Wasn’t that long ago that he and Joyce found Will in the Upside Down, blue in the face and cold all over. He’s so small. They’re all so goddamn small.

“We’ll get some food in you, okay?”

Will swallows, and the tipping of his chin looks enough like a nod that Hop takes it for an answer. He squeezes the kid’s hand one more time and gets up to go.

“Hop,” Will says, grasping after his hand but not quite catching him. “Billy. Don’t make him leave.”

Surprised at the request, he looks from Will to everyone in his entourage. Bob has that damn soft-hearted look on his face, and Jonathan’s avoiding his eyes altogether. That just leaves Barb, and she raises her eyebrows right back at him, just as coolly defiant as ever.

“Steve says they fought the dogs together,” she says. “The way he tells it, Billy saved his life.”

“They had each other’s backs,” Jonathan fills in, still not looking at Hop, though he does sort of glance at Barb out of the corner of his eye. “That’s important.”

Hop looks back down at Will and sighs. He knows when he’s outnumbered, and it doesn’t help that if they heard him trying to toss Billy out, they definitely heard Joyce defending the kid’s right to stay.

Well, fine.

“Okay, okay. You win. Happy?”

“Yeah,” Will sighs, flashing a smile that brightens even more when he catches sight of Mike through the open door. “Hey!”

Hop steps back and lets the kids pour into his room so they can get eyes on their friend. It’s a warming sight, and none of Hop’s business, really. He escapes into the hallway, walking in on Steve and Joyce rehashing the exact argument Hop just lost twice in rapid succession.

“ — not a big deal. I can take him home,” Steve tries.

Kali and the red head Hop recognizes as Billy’s sister flank Joyce where she’s ladling soup into a mug. They’re squared off against Steve almost as if they’re physically closing ranks against him. El walks up on them, too, taking her natural place at Kali’s side, and then Steve really does look totally outnumbered. Poor kid.

“No,” the tiny redhead says, “he’s better off here.”

“Look, I know, okay?” Steve hedges, but Hop notices the way his focus shifts off Joyce and onto Kali and the sister specifically. “I know. I won’t… I — he can come with me! Your dad doesn’t even have to know.”

“He’s not my dad,” the kid snaps, reeling herself back in when Joyce rubs her back.

“Max, come on,” he says, wheedling. “You know he’s gonna freak out if he wakes up and doesn’t know where he is.”

Joyce cuts a knowing glance at Steve while she’s setting the pot back on the stove. She slips it in so naturally and so subtly that Hop nearly misses it. The only reason he doesn’t, actually, is that he notices how it puts some color in Steve’s face.

Huh. Well, okay.

But he has to give it to the kid because in the next moment, even with his face burning up on him, he keeps trying, and he only stammers a little bit.

“Mrs. Byers, I really appreciate… your hospitality? That’s so awesome of you, but Billy’s… had a really rough night — we all have — and he might be… _upset_ , still? In the morning? And you already have so much to deal with. Hop! Tell her. You get it, right?”

Hop braces one hand on the counter and glances over his shoulder at the boy on the couch. Billy looks like he’d just about sleep through an air raid, and Max is nearly tearing a hole in her shirt for how much she’s worrying it with her fingers. So, two kids who can’t go home on account of the so-called man of the house, and the question before him is does he get it? Yeah, he’s got it. He’d have to be stupid not to. And to that end, it’s really not up to him where Billy spends the night.

“Joyce?”

She looks up at him and decisively sticks a spoon into Will’s steamy mug of soup. Her expression softens when she brings it back to Steve. “Sweetie, he’s tired. Do you really want to risk waking him now if it means he might not sleep later?”

“Ooh,” Bob’s voice floats out from the hallway. “Is that Will’s soup? I got it.” He comes in and takes the mug off Joyce’s hands, belatedly notices he’s interrupted something, and glances around at everyone’s serious faces. “We’re not still debating Sleeping Beauty, are we?”

Max laughs and promptly slaps a hand over her mouth. Hop has to bite back a smile at the startled look on her face. Steve sighs and places his hands behind him on the counter. Bob spares a very patient, very kind smile for him but doesn’t relent otherwise, and that’s just like him, really. Hop knows that now.

“He’ll be safe with us, Steve. Max, too, if she wants.”

Bob glances at Max and at Joyce in turns, giving them a chance to jump in and refute him if that’s what they’re determined to do, but they just trade private little smiles the likes of which he’s often seen Joyce share with El. Must be a girl thing because Kali gets in on it, too, and there’s El joining in on the fun.

Steve doesn’t have a leg to stand on and he knows it. Hop doesn’t feel good about the defeated look on his face, so he waves him over to the backdoor while Bob and the others are making their way back to Will’s room.

Like he thinks Hop might be of a mind to conspire with him to bust Billy out of Joyce’s custody, Steve perks up noticeably once they’re outside.

It might be funny if Hop didn’t hate the circumstances as much as he does, but here they are.

“Hop — ”

“I know, kid. I know.”

“…what? But I didn’t say anything.”

“Kid, bit of advice? Never play poker.”

Steve flaps his mouth ineffectually and scoffs, saying, “I don’t know what that means, and I don’t know why nobody wants to listen to me, but I need to get Billy out of here, okay? He’s gonna hate this. He didn’t even want to wait here to begin with.”

“Why’d he stay then?” Hop asks, and he means for the question to glance off its intended target, but it strikes at center mass.

 _“Because I told him to stay,”_ Steve says, not agitated yet, but working towards frantic. “Because he trusted me when I said he’d be safe here.”

“Okay, so what’s the problem?”

Steve starts, takes a wavering breath that’s halfway to a reply, but lets it go. He looks away, folding his wrists one over the other on top of his head. He shakes his head, a muscle jumping in his jaw.

“Steve, hey. Look at me. Look. What’s the problem?”

“Hop… like…” He sighs, a tense, sharp sound. His eyes are wide and serious. _“He trusts me.”_

Hop watches him hold the weight of that statement. It adds something to him — an austerity he doesn’t usually have.

“You’re worried about his dad, right?” he guesses, though it’s too good for a guess.

Steve’s shuttered expression cracks. He’s completely washed out in the moonlight.

“I know,” Hop says again. “I’ve seen it before.” He lets that sit for a second, and when he doesn’t get a reply, he adds, “Look, kid, you don’t have to tell me one way or another, and he doesn’t have to know that we talked about it. I get the feeling he wouldn’t like it. Am I right about that?”

Steve blinks, then nods like he doesn’t trust himself to use his words.

“Okay. So what I’ll do is come back in the morning and take ’em home, him and the sister. That way if they are in trouble, it’s my fault and not theirs. Sound good?”

Steve’s expression goes from deer in the headlights to carefully, impressively blank in just a few seconds. Not quick enough to evade notice by Hop’s standards, but it was a good effort.

“Do you think that’s better? Catching a ride with the police chief?”

“It will, if I do the talking.”

“Right.” Steve nods and looks away. He nods again, lips pressing together. “What’d you — I mean, when you said _you_ _know_. You know what?”

He thinks he knows what Steve’s really asking. It’s gotta be the same reason he’s gone pale in the face since bringing it up. Hop would reassure him, but he’s not sure what the best way to move forward on something like this is. Feigning ignorance feels pathetic, but acknowledging it before it’s been offered feels like it could be misconstrued as an attack. And he doesn’t want to convey either of those things.

It’s never mattered to him much anyway, but ever since Will went missing and Hop fell into this rabbit hole of vines and shadow monsters, it means even less than it used to. Except that’s not really right, is it?

When he looks at himself, he’s pretty sure he cares more now than he ever has.

Because take Will Byers. He’s a good kid all around, and even if he wasn’t, even if he wasn’t _the best_ of those kids in the house, he never could’ve done anything to deserve the kind of shit that came out of Lonnie’s mouth. As much hell as he’s been through, he still thinks of others before considering himself, and all with a smile on his face.

It’s none of Hop’s fucking business whatever kinda way that he’s wired, except that it’ll become his business right fucking quick if anybody else decides it has to be a goddamn problem. The same goes for Steve and for that boy on the couch.

They’ve been through hell. He’s not putting up with or endorsing anything as petty as bigotry, and neither are his kids.

“Hop?”

“Hmm? Oh.” He gets whatever look that was on his face off of it and sniffs, giving his mustache a little brush through with his fingers. “Just what I said. His dad.”

“Okay,” Steve says, not quite believing him but willing to leave it at that. He pats his pockets down, distracted, and digs a set of keys out of his pocket. “Guess I can just leave these with Billy then. His dad’ll flip if I show up with his — ” He cuts himself off and doesn’t look up from his hand.

“Just take the Camaro tonight,” Hop offers, trying to be classy and not call attention to the flighty look of panic on Steve’s face. “If we split the kids up between us, that’ll cut down on the time it takes getting ’em home.”

“Yeah, good plan.”

“That settles it then. Come on.” He palms Steve’s shoulder and steers him back toward the house.

Steve digs his heels in a few paces from the backdoor and wheels around on Hop, that skittishness finding its way back onto his face. “Hop…”

“Yeah?” he asks, spotting the exact moment whatever Steve was thinking of saying gets away from him. He watches him struggle to get it back, but it looks like an uphill battle and leaving him to scramble after it feels cruel somehow. He says, “It’s all right, Steve.”

“Huh?”

“If you drive his car,” Hop says, reaching for the door and keeping his face neutral. “He gave you the keys, didn’t he?”

Hop realizes as he’s saying it that he doesn’t actually know if that statement’s true. He just figured that was the case — the kid he’d seen earlier tonight wouldn’t have been able to sleep peacefully if someone took off in his car without him saying it was okay. Honestly, based on his observations, Hop wouldn’t have thought Billy was capable of sleeping soundly on a stranger’s couch at all.

“Oh, yeah, he did.”

“Don’t sweat it then.”

They head back inside, and Billy is still fast asleep on the couch. Steve hangs back to check on him while Hop continues on in the direction of Will’s room. It’s easy to see how wiped he is, but the excitement of seeing his friends is keeping him from kicking them out. Joyce locks eyes with Hop from her place near Will’s pillow, and he nods curtly.

“Okay, guys. We gotta call it a night.”

“We’ll be back tomorrow,” Mike promises right away, looking at Will and no one else. “If that’s okay?”

“Yeah,” Will says on an thready exhale, still smiling so big. “’Course it’s okay.”

“Awesome.”

They take turns hugging Will goodbye. El and Kali hug him, too, in spite of this being the first time they’ve met him. Hop gets it. Will Byers is a special kid.

When all is said and done, Hop ends up driving Barb, Nancy, and Mike home with El and Kali sitting low in the very back. Steve takes Dustin and Lucas in Billy’s car. By the time he gets everyone dropped off safe and sound, he’s ready to lie down and sleep for twelve hours. It’s been a hell of a night.

The cabin’s a mess of heaters and broken glass when they get in. Hop wishes he had someplace better to take the girls for their first night in Hawkins together, but he hasn’t been home to fix the windows since his and El’s fight, and he hasn’t been back to see all his boxes brought out from under the floorboards either. There’s no time to get into it now, but at least they have space heaters and blankets to combat the cold. It shouldn’t be too drafty in El’s room at least.

“Uh, Kali.”

She looks at him, dark eyes shining humorously in the half light. “Jim.”

“Hi. Um, bathroom’s that way. There’s blankets in here, or if you need another jacket, I guess El showed you those, too. She’s got clothes in her room if you wanna change. Should be something in there that’ll fit you. Food’s in the fridge, or there should be. If you’re hungry.”

“Thank you.”

“Uh huh. Okay, goodnight.”

“Hop.”

“Yeah, kid.”

El hugs him hard. He cradles the back of her head and holds on. She’s so small, and so strong.

“Goodnight,” she says, pulling away to smile up at him.

Hop smiles and mumbles it back to her. While they leave to get ready for bed, he does a quick sweep of the cabin and haphazardly cleans up whatever he can. He moves all the unclaimed heaters into a pile in the corner and replaces the boxes where he originally kept them under the floorboards. Once that’s done, he takes one of the heaters to his room and collapses into bed with all his clothes and jacket still on.

While the thought of tomorrow’s still present in his mind, he carefully sets his alarm. It’s not the twelve hours he wants, but it’ll leave him time enough to get to Joyce’s house bright and early as promised.

He dreams about that sterile, shiny room at the lab. He dreams he finds Kali’s there, but she can’t see him.

Her face is gaunt, and without the dark makeup closing them in, her eyes look big and tired. She’s sitting on the floor in a papery gown, shivering, looking out at nothing until the door opens.

A tiny figure walks in, illuminated in warm amber light and a smile. She crouches in front of Kali and wraps her in a jacket — Hop’s jacket, the one she was wearing when they turned up at Joyce’s house. Beaming and holding Kali’s face, El says, _“Sister.”_

Kali’s face in his dream crumples. She whispers, _“Sister.”_

And then El looks right at Hop and holds her hand out to him, too.

* * *

The alarm wakes him like a bucket of ice water. He falls out of bed trying to shut it off and lies there, sweating in a tangled mess of limbs, bedsheets, and suggestions of a dream. He sort of remembers it being about the lab, but everything else is blurred together. El and Kali, his jacket, sunlight underground. It was nice, maybe. As nice as anything concerning Hawkins Lab can be.

His bedroom door creaks open. He looks up, seeing El looking back at him. Still hoarse from sleep, he mumbles, “Hey. Didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No.” She pushes the door open and helps him peel back the layers of bedding entombing him on the floor. The look on her face is so serious when she pauses and asks him, “Going back?”

“Uh, yeah. Why?”

“Can we come?”

“Both of you?”

“You don’t suppose I would stay here unsupervised, do you?” Kali asks, stepping into view.

“Ah. Nope. Just didn’t know if you were up.”

“Jane made coffee,” she announces, holding out a hand to help El to her feet.

“Come on,” she says, holding her hand out to Hop, too, like she’s gonna help him up the way Kali did for her.

He stares at her little pink fingernails and then higher up at the earnest, peaceful expression on her face. Kali has a similar kind of look about her when she extends her hand alongside El’s. Hop doesn’t mean to laugh at the gesture, but seriously. He’s a big guy.

Kali arches an eyebrow at him, and he shuts up. Between the two of them and Hop’s popping knees, they get him standing.

 _Small_ , he thinks. _But so strong_.

El and Kali are dressed and ready to go, so Hop puts some pep in his step while he’s running around getting changed out of last night’s clothes. The cabin’s verifiably freezing, and it’s a pretty good motivator in terms of keeping him moving. He pours himself about two cups’ worth of coffee into a thermos and follows the girls out to the truck.

They’re quiet on the drive over to Joyce’s house. El holds Kali’s hand and faces the front while Kali stares out the window. He wonders belatedly if he should’ve called ahead, but it wouldn’t have done them any favors if the ringing phone woke the Hargrove kids, especially Billy. Best to let the kid sleep if he’s still sleeping, as hard as everyone campaigned for his right to lay his head down.

“What will you do about the father?” Kali asks clean out of left field.

Hop glances over at her. “What do you know about that?”

“I know men who speak no other language but violence,” she murmurs, still staring straight out the window.

His hands tighten around the steering wheel. He’d like to burn Hawkins Lab to the ground and call the smoking rubble _a start_ at settling the score. He shakes his head, saying, “I can’t do anything if Billy doesn’t ask.”

“Billy,” El says, perking up. She looks at Kali expectantly. “He came back.”

“Yes,” Kali tells her, just sweeter than a candy apple. Noticeably less sweet, she says in Hop’s direction, “And good thing he did, given the extent of his fatigue. You would’ve expelled him from the house at a word, but you won’t lift a finger to help him now that you know?”

“ _At a word,_ Kali,” Hop reminds her, using her own words to do it because there’s no way she’ll listen otherwise. “Isn’t that what I said? I need him to ask me.”

“He won’t ask,” she mutters.

“Oh, yeah? What makes you say that?”

El turns from Hop to Kali, big hazel eyes questioning. Hop sees Kali squeeze her hand. He doesn’t think she knows what they’re talking about yet, but it’s not much of a leap to make.

Kali sighs testily, saying, “Because it would make him vulnerable, and not just him, but the sister as well.”

“I don’t like it either, but my hands are tied here. You got any ideas to share about what I should be doing differently? I’m all ears.”

She gives him a flat glare. With last night’s makeup washed off her face, she looks younger, oddly hopeful, and every bit as bold as he’s come to expect. The light in her eyes reminds him enough of El that they really do almost look related. The resemblance gets even more uncanny when she frowns at him, unleashing the brass.

 _Yeah_ , he thinks. _Sisters_.

“Go to the father,” she says. “You’re the law, aren’t you?”

“ _The law?_ This ain’t _A Fistful of Dollars_ , Kali. It’s Hawkins, Indiana.”

“You would let this man continue to hurt his child.”

“Hey,” Hop snaps, rolling up his window. “No one is letting _anyone_ do _anything_.”

“Billy’s hurt?” El asks, not at Kali’s level yet, but frowning all the same.

Kali doesn’t answer, but the look she gives Hop carries enough speech in it for both of them. He grits his teeth and tries to explain.

“Look, one thing at a time, all right? I am gonna _handle_ this, but in order to do that, I need him to _ask me_. You think you got a pretty good handle on what he’s like? Well, so do I. Kid like that isn’t gonna just open up and come to a cop for help, not for anything. But seeing as that’s what I _need_ him to do so I can step in and _do my job_ , that means I gotta earn his trust first. How’m I doing so far?”

The breakneck quip he was expecting from Kali doesn’t come. Her sullen silence doesn’t feel like a victory, but nothing about this particular conversation feels good.

“How do you know he needs help?” El asks.

Hop doesn’t look away from the road. He takes a second to think about his answer and then tells her as much of the truth as he’s come to learn it. “There are signs you learn to look for with this kinda thing. Patterns. Ways people have of talking about it without really saying it.”

“Patterns,” she repeats. “Easy to hide?”

“Yeah, they can be.”

“Hard to prove,” El adds. “Why?”

“Uh, ‘cuz people keep it quiet a lot of the time.”

“Why?” she persists, not understanding.

“Lots of reasons, kid,” he tells her with a sigh. “To protect themselves or their family, or y’know, sometimes people’d be destitute if they tried to leave.”

“Destitute,” El repeats, turning the word over in her mouth and frowning at the way it tastes.

In a hollow voice, Kali says, “Left with nothing, Jane. Destitute.”

El hums, thinking. She shakes her head and covers Kali’s hand so it’s sandwiched between both of hers. She says, _“Home.”_

Hop feels a strange, breathless kind of ache in his chest. Kali looks like she feels a similar kind of way. She folds her remaining hand over El’s, smiling but seeming to be incapable of words. Hop knows the feeling. El has a knack for bringing that out in people, no matter how determined they are to be made of stone. He pulls up to a stop sign and lingers for a minute, letting that image of these girls, these survivors, holding onto each other in the aftermath of a bonafide apocalypse.

“Can you ask Billy to ask you?” El says, looking at him with so much genuine wonder and optimism that he can’t stand to tell her no.

He’s still just stopped at the sign, watching her watch him and feeling Kali watch him, too. He tells her, “I can keep an eye on him, and I can try to make him feel safe enough to speak up.”

“A half-measure,” Kali mutters, and then louder, “Typical.”

“Right,” Hop pops back, temper sparking, though he keeps a tight lid on it. Wouldn’t do a damn thing to help prove his point. “Look, I haven’t asked about Chicago, and _no_ — I’m not _going_ to ask about Chicago — but there’s a difference between proper police conduct and harassment, all right? I show my hand too soon with nothing to show for it on what essentially boils down to a hunch, it’s just gonna make everything worse.”

He finally takes the turn just to keep himself from having to listen to the silence. In it he can hear every ounce of judgement Kali pulled for El’s sake. Nice of her to restrain herself. Hop could stand to take a lesson, he’s not too proud to admit it.

And that’s an ugly thought, isn’t it? He knows what his life’s been till now. Everything he’s gone through that’s shaped his opinion of heavy-handed fathers and how that instinct to flinch never quite goes away. But even knowing that, and knowing that he’d never hit El or Kali or any kid, he still catches himself screaming from time to time. Why? Because it was written in the stars that he’d tend toward explosions ever since his dad first raised a hand to him?

It’s not hard to reason out why Kali might not think he’s gonna take this thing with Billy seriously. Whatever kind of life she scraped out for herself before El found her, it can’t have been one that left her trusting cops all that much. Here she is campaigning for someone else, someone she wouldn’t hesitate to save herself if she had it her way, and he can’t give her anything concrete. Not a single reason to believe him.

But maybe there’s something else he can give her.

“Y’know, these things repeat. Someone spits on you, you turn around and want to spit on someone else. Make ‘em feel just as bad as you do. Just as ugly. Billy’s dad hits him, what do you think happens from there?”

Kali sucks in a breath, and Hop looks at her. He gives her a chance. She doesn’t take it.

“‘Course, sometimes people go the other way. El,” he continues, careful to keep his words gentle, “have I ever hit you?”

She frowns with her whole face. “No. Just yell sometimes.”

“I gotta get better about that,” he says, remembering how he walked away from her that day, all the windows blown out and the tears on her face. Even with her powers, why the hell does he ever have to take that tone with her? He doesn’t, and he’s lucky he hasn’t taught her to be quieter than she was when he first took her in. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” El murmurs, still frowning.

Kali stares at him, and he can see in her eyes that she’s got the measure of him already.

El’s eyebrows pull down. She’s got the shape of him, too. “Someone was ugly to you?”

He laughs and focuses on the road in front of him. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“But you aren’t,” she says, like she’s puzzling through a math problem.

“I hope not, but I know I can be.”

She frowns, softer this time, thinking hard about something until she makes up her mind what she’s trying to say. Almost meditatively, she murmurs, “Papa was ugly.”

Hop hums. Kali exhales, long and slow, eyes slipping shut.

“We’re not,” El tells her in an aside.

Tightly, she concedes, “Of course you aren’t, Jane.”

_“We’re not.”_

“Jane,” Kali mumbles.

She looks at Hop, urgency written all over her little face. “Not ugly. Pretty.”

He smiles, a helpless, gnawing affection rising in his throat. He focuses on the road, mostly out of a sense of self-preservation. “Yeah, pretty.”

“Billy, too.”

“Pretty’s not what you say about boys, El.”

“Not pretty?” she echoes, like the sound of it confuses her. “But last night, Bob called him ‘Sleeping Beauty’.”

Kali laughs, a warm sound. She says, “That’s right, and you didn’t correct him then, did you, Jim?”

Hop blinks at a street sign as he passes it and weighs the pros and cons of trying to explain sarcasm to El. Ultimately he makes the enlightened decision not to open up that can of worms. He takes the last right turn through the trees before they get to Joyce’s house. He unbuckles his seatbelt before turning to meet their matching stares. El looks most of the way back to calm, and Kali’s warmed over a lot just from laughing, but he doesn’t feel totally satisfied that they’re on the same wavelength.

“Kali, listen. I know how important this is, okay? And I’m gonna do whatever I can to help. Do you believe that?”

“Say I do, and say your caution serves no one but the aggressor. What then, Jim?”

He thinks he knows the direction of her thoughts by now. She’s all sharp corners and direct hits, and watering shit down isn’t gonna fly with her. Neither is telling her her way’s wrong, which he doesn’t think in the first place. Not when he knows exactly where she’s coming from and why she’s frustrated. He’s frustrated, too. So he figures, to hell with it.

“Clint Eastwood,” he says, aiming his hands up into the air like pistols. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Her eyes light up. “Really?”

“Could I stop you?”

“No,” she laughs, and hearing it, recoils just a fraction. “No?”

Hell, that’s cute. Hop restrains the smile pulling at the corners of his mouth and says, “You wanna help him. I do, too. Let me try first. Deal?”

Kali stares at his offered hand and eventually takes it. Her grip is firm and sure. Quietly, she says, “You surprise me.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“We have a deal,” she says in a voice that stops him from popping his door open. “Jane trusts you, and I trust her, so I’ll abide by its terms. Just know that if the matter comes to me, any man who thinks it his right to mistreat those in his care with impunity _will learn_ true ugliness by my hand.”

“Uh huh.”

“I understand what it makes me, Jim. I don’t fear it.”

“Yeah, didn’t think so,” he muses, already so goddamn fond of her and that very specific brand of hellfire she’s got that he thought was unique to El. “For the record, kid? What I said before? Doesn’t really apply to bullies.”

Her dark eyes spark, and she shares a look with El. Hop can pull a few guesses about Chicago based on that look, but maybe it’s better he doesn’t ask. Plausible deniability and all that.

“Dangerous,” El murmurs.

Yeah, he’s not gonna ask.

“Hey, if you’re gonna be a bear,” he drawls, finally opening his door. “Be a Grizzly.”

Kali smiles with all her teeth, and El follows her out of the truck, still holding her hand. They walk up the driveway onto the porch where Hop knocks on the door. Jonathan answers after a few seconds, barefoot and in his pajamas. Over his shoulder, Hop can see Billy and Max scrambling to fold sheets and blankets. Judging by the layout, she slept on the floor right in front of the couch where Billy conked out. Jonathan smiles, looking much more upbeat than usual, and steps back so they can come inside.

“Morning! Mom’s making breakfast. Did you guys eat yet?”

“No,” El and Kali say at the same time.

Hop’s ears get hot. He hovers near the couch but doesn’t stare at the kids cleaning up their makeshift beds. “That’s my fault. We were in a rush to get over here.”

“Hop, you’re early!” Joyce calls out, handing a spatula off to Bob, who waves. “Hi, girls!”

He and Jonathan sidestep all the hugging, which pushes them into the kitchen with Bob. That’s probably better for everyone. Let Joyce and the kids regroup while Hop keeps up a casual distance and eases them into his being there.

Thinking of it as a clever strategy helps him feel less like he’s beating a hasty retreat.

There is an undeniable benefit to being in the kitchen, though. He comes around the table to touch Will’s shoulder, leaning his other hand against the back of an empty chair.

“Look who’s up and at ’em. Didn’t expect to see you till later.”

“I didn’t sleep much,” Will admits.

“No? You weren’t tired?”

“Mm-mm. Mostly just hungry.”

El slides into the chair Hop’s braced against. She leans over to hug Will — he can only imagine how much they’ve heard about each other for them to get along so fast.

Hop’s grateful for that closeness. He knows he’s to blame for her year in isolation, but he made that choice to protect her. He tells himself he’d make it again in a heartbeat, but their matching shy smiles make it a hard sell.

“Joyce, we’ve got pancakes!” Bob announces, topping off the tall stack Joyce started with a flourish.

Hop glances behind him into the living room. Kali and Max are already making their way hand in hand to the kitchen. It’s sweet that it seems to come so naturally to them. He’s never been an expert on girls, but he remembers being thirteen and looking up to the bigger kids just because they were bigger and that automatically made them cool. Kali’s got a whole other thing going for her in addition to that, though. She walks with authority and carries herself with the air of a protector, and it’s hard, even for Hop who makes a living off seeing through pretenses, not to buy what she’s selling.

He lets go of the chair and makes room for Kali and Max to pass. Out in the living room, Billy’s trying his hardest to talk Joyce into turning him out, and even though Hop knows better, it’s clear the kid has no idea who he’s up against.

Joyce has to look up at Billy, sure, but she’s had plenty of practice doing that with Jonathan and the tough guy act Billy projects doesn’t get her to budge an inch. When he gets a little closer, Hop can see why.

She’d never be cowed by some kid in the first place, but the pillow creases in Billy’s cheek and the sleep crust accumulated in the corners of his eyes certainly don’t do him any favors. Steve was right when he said Billy would be upset in the morning. He’s doing a good job of downplaying it, but Hop can see his hands shaking before he shoves them in his pockets.

“Joyce, give us a minute, will you?”

“Hop — ”

“I just want a word with him. We’ll stay right here where you can see us.”

She looks at him with her most serious eyes, and he flashes a smile right back at her. He keeps it light, for now. No reason to go and let her think he’s gonna strong-arm the kid when that’s not his intention. Something in his face does wind up convincing her, but the way Billy keeps shooting looks at him from the corner of his eye, it’s gonna be harder winning him over. That’s all right. Hop knew he’d have to work for that.

“Just come on back whenever you’re ready, okay, Billy? There’s plenty of food.”

“I appreciate it, Mrs. Byers,” Billy answers in that same silky, smiling voice that — Hop looks — doesn’t reach his eyes. As soon as she’s safely tucked away in the kitchen, his eyes slip into the middle distance, and he says, flatly, “I just wanna get home, sir. I don’t need a ride or anything. I can make my own way.”

Hop blinks, getting a good look at the kid in front of him. He went to school with guys like him, and he’s seen them bullshit their way through life the way Billy’s trying to bullshit his way out of breakfast. The big difference here is the guys Hop knew growing up didn’t break out the snake oil to _stop_ people from bending over backwards to help them.

“Yeah, no. That’s not how this is gonna go.”

That gets Billy looking at him, and Hop was ready for anger, but for some reason he wasn’t expecting fear. He keeps his hands glued to his hips, too aware of how much jumpier the kid’ll get if Hop starts waving his hands around.

“Listen, you’re already late. Sit down, have some breakfast. I’ll drive you home after. How does that sound?”

A muscle in Billy’s jaw twitches. He smiles through it, looking like he swallowed an egg. “Well, Chief, sounds like my ass is grass no matter what.”

Hop ignores his instinct to clap a hand on Billy’s shoulder and instead waits for him to head into the kitchen of his own volition. Will, Jonathan, and El are at the table with their plates, leaving Kali and Max at the kitchen island. Joyce and Bob are leaning against the counter nursing mugs of coffee, freeing up a space at the table.

At a pointed look from Hop, Billy woodenly accepts a plate from Joyce and takes it to the kitchen island to sit next to his sister. She promptly steals a piece of bacon off his plate, and Hop’s watching, so he sees Billy swipe her orange juice without missing a beat. Kali catches Hop’s eye and raises an eyebrow at him. He can almost hear her in his head, saying, _Not ugly._

— and promptly makes a note to ask her later if that’s one of her abilities.

Joyce snaps him out of his thinking by handing him a plate, and he doesn’t want to sit while she and Bob are left standing, but they pull the chair out for him and everything. They’re too nice, these people.

Jonathan’s first to finish his food and leave the table. He brushes a hand through his brother’s hair before he goes and leaves his chair out for his mom. She replaces Jonathan’s hand over the back of Will’s head with her own, all love and warmth in her eyes when she looks at him. Will glances from her to the kitchen island and back, turning red in a way that makes him look more like himself since he hasn’t quite gotten all his color back.

“Mom,” he mumbles, but doesn’t pull away.

“Oh.” She beams at him and takes her hand away. “So serious.”

“No, just…” He crunches a mouthful of bacon and shrugs, exasperated but in a soft kind of way.

“Hey, Hop,” Bob says, coming around Hop’s other side and crouching by the edge of the table. He keeps his voice low. “Joyce said you’re taking the kids home later?”

“Yeah, why?”

“We were talking it over after you left last night. Do you mind if we tag along?”

Joyce is looking at them from across the table. Will and El, too. Across the way, Kali, Max, and Billy are having their own conversation. Max gestures emphatically with her fork, and Kali covers a burgeoning smile with her hand. Billy just stares at her, smiling so faintly it’s more of a suggestion than an outright expression.

Hop looks down and takes a long drink of his coffee. “I don’t mind. They’d probably rather go with you anyway.”

“We could take Max,” Joyce offers just as quietly, locking eyes with Hop. “Give you a chance to talk to him.”

He realizes then that he’s sitting at a table full of people who’ve had more than their fair share of shitty dads tearing up their lives. Billy’s in better company than he probably realizes. Hop just doesn’t know if that necessarily means things are gonna go as smoothly as they want. This kind of thing, it’s never easy or straightforward. Should be, but it isn’t.

“Or we can drive Billy,” Bob volunteers. “Either way, right, Joyce?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

El leans forward in her chair, looking intently at Hop over her breakfast. She and Will look up over Hop’s shoulder at the same time. Some of the color from before comes back up in Will’s face. Hop turns in his chair to see Max standing right at his shoulder with Kali just behind her, Billy in the background silently carrying their stacked dishes to the sink.

Max smiles sunnily at him. “We’re ready when you are, Hop.”

“Okay, kid. Gimme a minute to help clean all this up.”

Jonathan comes back into the kitchen with his hair wet and takes the sponge off Bob’s hands before he can get started on the dishes. Will starts to get up to help, but Billy points at him and he sits back down, wide-eyed.

Kali sidles up to Hop where he’s lingering at the mouth of the kitchen, half in the hallway. She muses, “What was it you were saying before, Jim?”

“If you’re gonna be a bear?” he says, playing dumb.

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten that. Don’t worry.”

She grins sharply up at him, leaning her shoulder against the opposite doorframe to mirror him. Joyce and Bob rush past them into the next room to get their coats. In the kitchen, El’s methodically drying dishes as Jonathan washes them.

Max sits at the table with Will, and Billy stands to the left of her chair with his arms crossed. Hop can’t see their faces, but he can see the charmed look of surprise on Will’s.

“Do you really believe he’s the repeating kind?” she asks, muted.

“Honestly? I don’t know yet.”

“Are you guys ready?” Joyce calls out, poking her head into the kitchen. “Jonathan, do you know where I left my keys?”

“Purse?” he tries.

“Are they in your pocket?” Will asks.

Joyce tries her coat pockets and sighs. “Thank you, sweetie. Okay, Max? Billy? Oh, Kali. Are you and El okay to stay here with the boys? We’ll be right back.”

“Jane?”

“Okay!” El glances over her shoulder and drops a fork. “Oh! Sorry.”

“No worries,” Jonathan soothes. He picks it up and scrubs it clean again.

Joyce flashes a smile at Max and Billy when they walk over together. She says, “We’re driving over, too. Do you want to ride in the car with us or with Hop?”

Hop crosses his arms. Kali slips unasked into the kitchen and starts putting away the dishes El’s dried. Max looks expectantly at Billy, but he doesn’t look at her. Too busy glancing sideways at Hop.

“Go with them, Max.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Go ahead. I’ll see you at the house.”

“Billy — ”

“It’s okay. Just go.”

Max looks at Hop then, not glaring, not exactly, but close — accusing. She doesn’t say anything before going out the front door with Bob and Joyce. She’s got the same steely backbone he’s seen in his girls, and he has to wonder if that’s another one of those things they all have in common. Knowing what he does about Joyce, Barb, and Nancy, he wouldn’t be surprised.

Billy waits for Bob and Joyce to follow Max outside before heading out himself. He walks with Hop to his truck, the picture of docility. With Joyce out in front of them, Hop doesn’t even need directions.

“Y’know, Steve came back for you last night.”

With the windows down and the radio off, Hop’s only competing with the rumble of tires on the road to be heard. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Billy go completely rigid. His body’s angled toward him, so it’s easy to see the tension locking him up. Hop keeps his tone light.

“I think I remember him saying he was gonna leave you his keys since he took yours with him.”

Billy pats down his pockets and produces a set of keys. He stares at them, speechless.

“I had to give him my word I’d drive you home. He wouldn’t’ve left otherwise, and your sister didn’t want anyone moving you, so here I am.”

He glances over and sees Billy close his hand into a fist around Steve’s keys. Billy drops his head back into the seat and turns to face the window before grimacing and facing the front again. He stuffs Steve’s keys back into his pocket and keeps staring out at the road.

“Now you weren’t here when Will and Barb went missing last year, so your parents don’t know that what happened last night isn’t the first time something like it’s gone down in Hawkins. I figure, even if you told ’em the whole truth and nothing but, they might not believe you. And based on the way you took off last night, I’m guessing that it could get bad for you if they didn’t.”

Hop follows Joyce’s car onto a residential street, on the lookout for brake lights to tell him where to stop.

“I thought I might talk to your dad and tell him how it is, but between me and Joyce, I’m thinking I might not be the best option. I don’t know, why don’t you tell me how it looks from where you’re sitting?” He glances back at Billy, who’s shifted his gaze directly onto Hop, though he can’t seem to meet his eyes. “Still think your ass is grass no matter what?”

Billy finally meets his eyes, looking genuinely baffled. Hop cuts him a break and concentrates on parking on the curb behind Joyce. He shuts off the engine.

“Billy, listen. I was there last night. I saw everything you saw and then some, okay? So I get it, and I’m telling you, if you see anything like it again — or if there’s _anything_ you can’t deal with on your own or anything you want stopped — you can come to me or Joyce, and we’ll believe you. Do we understand each other?”

Billy nods and mumbles, “Yes, sir.”

“Okay,” Hop sighs, opening his door. “Hang back with me. We’ll let the pros do their thing.”

Max makes a beeline for them, still giving Billy that look like she’s ready to go just as soon as he gets his shit together and goes with her. It’s sweet, Hop has to admit.

“Go on,” Billy tells her, and his voice is maybe at half strength. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

She turns to give Hop that sour, suspicious look again, this time going as far as to say, “I hope Kali was right about you.”

“The hell does that mean?” he grouses, but she’s already taking off for the door.

“Don’t take it so hard, Chief,” Billy mumbles, walking around to put himself on Hop’s left side. “She’s got a knack for one-liners.”

Hop shakes his head. Girls. God help him, but they’re his favorite.

Joyce walks leisurely across the lawn with Bob, waiting with Max at the door while she rings the bell. Billy stays put at Hop’s shoulder and buries his hands deep in his pockets. He looks like a prisoner standing before a firing squad. Hop gets comfortable and drapes an arm along the roof of the truck behind Billy. For all the loose and easy posturing, Hop’s careful not to touch him. They watch the door open in silence.

Hop glances from the woman to Billy, noting the lack of a physical resemblance and further, the lack of any change in Billy’s face upon seeing her. When the dad comes into view, that’s when Billy’s face changes. His whole stance tightens up, and a tendon in his neck stands out.

“Stay cool,” Hop murmurs, looking away from Billy to stare the dad down.

He trusted his instincts when he started putting the pieces together last night, but now? He knows he gets just like a dog with a bone when he’s on the scent of something like this. It’s a cop thing, but in this specific case, it’s very much a dad thing, too.

Billy’s not small like El or Will, but under Hop’s arm, even with a foot of space between them, he doesn’t feel far from it. The weight of that responsibility hits Hop like a ton of bricks. Because what’s the point of being a cop, or being a father, if he can’t keep kids safe? He pulls his most unforgiving expression and stares across the space of the yard at Billy’s dad, thinking, _Try me, dipshit. Make my day._

They’re too far from the door to hear what Joyce is saying all that well, but Hop can guess at the line she’s feeding them. He lifts the hand farthest from Billy in a bland wave and sees the dad fold his arms over his chest.

“You sure about this, Chief?” Billy asks, gone very pale.

As a matter of fact, he is. The whole idea’s been steadily gaining traction in his mind the more that it takes shape before him, and the fact that Billy’s talking to him at all convinces him the rest of the way.

“Yeah, kid. Are you? You don’t wanna go in there, you just say so.”

Billy chews on his lip. He shoots a skittish look toward the house, but his gaze swings right back to Hop.

Behind him, Max is already disappearing with her mom into the house, and Bob and Joyce are heading back. Hop waits, and he’s ready to keep waiting, but he doesn’t get the chance.

_“Billy.”_

The carved open look on Billy’s face wrenches itself shut, and just like that, the easily spooked boy dissolves like one of Kali’s illusions and the smooth-talking kid with broken glass for a smile takes over. It still doesn’t touch his eyes.

Hop’s seen probably a dozen of Billy Hargrove’s bullshit grins, smirks, and smiles since last night, and the only one of ‘em that was genuine was for his sister.

“Thanks for the ride, Chief.”

“Uh huh. Billy, look — ”

He turns on his heel, still backing away but looking so thoroughly casual about it that Hop’s impressed in spite of himself. There’s a very specific look the kid’s going for, but with the morning sun lighting up his bedhead from behind, he looks more his age and less the burnout adult he’s trying to pass for. He doesn’t have Hop fooled for a second, but he must be pretty used to pulling the wool over people’s eyes because he doesn’t let it slow him down a bit.

“You think about what I said, okay?”

“Yep. Got it.”

Hop stays where he is by the truck and watches Billy until he disappears behind his dad into the house. Joyce and Bob meet him at the front of his truck with questioning looks.

“Well?” Joyce asks.

“Another minute, I’d’ve had him.”

“Damn it.”

“I don’t know,” Bob murmurs, shrugging. “Looked to me like he was really listening to you right at the end there.”

“Yeah, before the dad called him back.”

“That’s good! No, really, Hop, that’s great!” Joyce enthuses, earnest and hopeful in a way Hop has never known how to be. “I don’t know what you said to him, but he heard you. You just gotta give him time.”

“Yeah?” Hop says, skeptical, not really meaning to tease but coming across the way. He makes a face at her when she whacks his arm. “Ow!”

“She’s right, Hop. All you can do is let him know he’s not alone.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Hop glances over his shoulder and catches movement in the curtains through the window. “How ’bout we get back and make sure our kids didn’t burn the house down?”

Bob snorts and catches the keys when Joyce tosses them his way. Hop climbs back into his truck and pulls out ahead of them onto the street. No point in waiting this time, not when he knows the way back.

He thinks about the kids they just dropped off, and he thinks about the parents. The mom’s a blank space, and the dad’s a minefield. Doesn’t seem to be the case for Max so much, if at all. It leaves Hop wondering if Billy gets the full brunt of it on purpose so that no one else will or if it’s a conscious decision on the dad’s part to target Billy specifically. Hop doesn’t like either option, but if it’s the second one, he has an inkling as to why Billy might be extra motivated to keep the whole thing under wraps.

Should be an easier way to solve all this bullshit than waiting for a shellshocked kid to come forward when everything in him’s screaming at him not to make waves. Like an answer, Kali swings open the door to Joyce’s just as Hop pulls up outside the house. She must’ve seen his truck coming up the road.

She smiles sweetly and waves like she’s Princess Diana or something. Hop gets out of his truck, grudgingly charmed. He already has to put up with El’s wide-eyed, innocent stares. These sharp-toothed smiles from Kali aren’t gonna be easy to combat with a straight face.

At some point they’re gonna have to have a conversation about what all this means and the implications of her staying with them long-term because — well, because obviously he can’t send her back to Chicago. She’s El’s sister and El’s his daughter, and he doesn’t know just yet what that makes him to her, or if it does make him anything, but they’ve earned some goddamn peace by now. If he can be a source of safety for El, then maybe Kali will accept that from him, too, someday.

He’s not ready to say that to her, so he clears his throat and says, “We’re gonna have to work on your visibility, kid.”

“Jim, need I remind you?”

She disappears right before his eyes. He blinks, catches himself, and plants his hands on his hips until she lets him see her again. Her grin is cheeky this time around. She’s thawed almost entirely ever since he made the Clint Eastwood comment, and honestly he’s been wondering if that was the right thing to say or if it would just cause problems later, but he’s glad to have some kind of even footing with her.

He’s a long way from admitting it out loud, but he wants her to like him.

“What’d you say to Max?” he asks, since she’s still stood in the doorway grinning up at him.

“I told her the truth, in as far as I know it.”

“Which is what?”

“That you have a soft heart for strays, and that Billy fits the profile.”

Hop scoffs, trying to hide his laugh and failing. She’s not wrong.

“Pot calling the kettle black there, Kali.”

“Because I stand for strays, or because I am one?”

“Yeah,” he says, shooing her from the door with both hands. “Now, c’mon. It’s cold out here.”

She relents and backtracks into the house with him right on her heels. Will and El are sat side by side on the couch, Jonathan sitting on the floor next to his brother in spite of the vacant armchairs not two feet away. Kali has no qualms about taking up the armchair, though. She settles right in, looking for all the world like it’s her house and there’s nowhere else she needs to be right now.

“Are they okay?” Will asks, looking up at Hop from where he’s slouched against the armrest with a blanket draped around his shoulders.

“Yeah, we saw ’em home no problem.”

Jonathan nods. “That’s good. They seemed… nervous, about going.”

“Doubt all this helped put ‘em at ease,” Hop says, waving his hand at the boarded up window.

Kali scoffs. “A bit of broken glass? That’s hardly upsetting on its own.”

“That’s really sad, Kali,” Will says in his small, cracked voice.

She looks up from her nails, and her resounding silence paired with the startled expression on her face is almost enough to break Hop’s heart. Yeah, he’d like to go at Hawkins Lab with a sledgehammer and let the kids light the match that burns it all down.

The door opens behind him, and Joyce and Bob stomp in, shrugging out of their coats.

“Were you planning on sticking around, Hop?” Joyce asks, not hearing the silence they broke with their entrance. “We could use help with the window, but I know you’ve gotta fix up the cabin, too.”

“I’ll stay and help. You guys mind?”

Kali shakes her head. El smiles at Will, and he smiles back. He’s not at a hundred percent yet, but he definitely looks better.

Hop’s gonna end up regretting not taking the girls home now when Mike and his friends inevitably show up later, but they’ve earned some downtime. Hop’s no stranger to close calls. He knows how much worse it could’ve gone last night, and he knows how lucky they are that no one died.

Well, save some government tools. Hop’s not gonna waste any time getting broken up about them, though.

They’ll stay and help Joyce fix the window, the girls can wait to see Will’s friends if that’s what they wanna do, and maybe Bob and Jonathan will go with Hop later to work on bringing the cabin back up to code. They can make a guy’s day out of it. Normally he wouldn’t even think to ask, but he’s not keen on doing anything alone today. Something about watching a little girl save the world just has him in a sentimental mood, apparently. Jesus, he’s only human.

But that reminds him.

“Hey, Jonathan. C’mere a second.”

Jonathan looks up and follows Hop gamely enough into the kitchen. He looks back at Will and his mom once just to check with them, but they let him go.

“What’s up?”

“Think you can do me a favor?”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“Billy Hargrove,” Hop starts, watching Jonathan’s face. When his expression doesn’t change — and when the curious, helpful light in his eyes doesn’t fade — he adds, “I need to get his car back to him.”

“Oh, yeah. I already told Steve I’d help.”

“You did, huh?”

“Yeah, um, he just mentioned that Billy has his keys and that his car’s up by the old train tracks off Heathrow, so I told him I’d take Billy there to pick it up. Then they can trade back at Steve’s, I guess.”

Hop leans his hip against the counter. Steve Harrington’s not subtle, but he’s got a lot of heart.

“All right. Okay, that’s all I needed to hear. Thanks, kid.”

“Sure, Hop.”

“Oh, hey, uh.” Hop crosses his arms over his chest and looks away from where Jonathan’s stopped at the edge of the hallway. “Look, if we finish up early, I don’t know, do you think you’d mind, um.”

A smile flickers over Jonathan’s face. He crosses his arms so that they’re mirroring each other.

Hop sighs. “It’s just that it’d go easier at the cabin. If I had help. Do you — well, I mean…”

“Yeah,” Jonathan laughs, clearly trying to stifle it, but failing. “After I drop Billy off. Will that work?”

“Yep. Sure will.” Hop claps his hands and starts back into the living room. “Okay, great. Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“Did I hear that right?” Bob asks almost immediately. “You need help with repairs at the cabin? Hop, why didn’t you say so? I’ll go with you guys. That way we can buy all the equipment in one go. It’s gonna be a cinch with the three of us.”

“How could I say no to that?” Hop muses, not saying the rest of it, which is that he was planning on asking Bob anyway. “Wanna put together a list, Joyce?” he asks, as innocuously as he can. He’s got a few things he’d like to add to it while they’re on the subject.

Even with the gate closed and the monster out of Will, Hop figures it’s better to be safe than sorry in case shit starts going sideways in Hawkins again.

So he waits until it’s just him and Bob at the hardware store to bring it up.

“A panic room?” Bob repeats, looking concerned.

“Yeah, y’know, like we made for Will.”

“Oh, I see.” He grins, catching onto Hop’s meaning. “A nondescript containment cell.”

“Sure, a nondescript… uh huh.”

“I don’t know, Hop. Do you really think that’s necessary?”

“Maybe not, but I don’t want to be caught without one if this happens again, do you?”

“Well, no, of course not, and I guess you’ve got a point. Forewarned _is_ forearmed.”

“Right, so what do you say?”

“You’re not wanting to keep it a secret from Joyce, are you?”

“No, we’ll read her in as soon as we get back. I just don’t want the kids to catch wind of it. Kinda defeats the purpose of a mystery spot if everyone knows where it is.”

“Oh. Yeah, I see what you mean. Okay then. What do we need?”

Hop takes out Joyce’s list and digs around in his pocket for his notepad. He uncaps his pen, circles a few of the items jotted down in Joyce’s messy handwriting, and adds a few more things at the bottom just off the top of his head. Bob’s looking at him when he puts the pen away.

“Glassware, Aisle 7. Then we gotta see if somebody around here has a backhoe to rent out.”

They’ve got a full day’s work ahead of them. He’s looking forward to it.


	15. Assholes in Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jonathan keeps his promise to Steve and gets way more than he bargained for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) Mentions of past abusive assholery (a la Lonnie Byers)  
> 2) Neil Hargrove's smug jerk face  
> 3) A royal rumble of sorts

Jonathan tries to talk Will out of going with him to pick Billy up, but he’s persistent. Even gray in the face and sporting dark circles under his eyes, Jonathan can’t help but believe him when he says he’s not tired. They went through enough of this exact back and forth the first time Will was in recovery from the Upside Down that Jonathan’s learned the way to counteract his brother’s stubbornness isn’t to meet it with more of the same.

So if Will says he’s not tired, he’s not tired. And if he says he wants to go with Jonathan to take Billy to Steve’s car, then that’s really what he wants. It’ll be interesting, at least. Maybe he’ll figure out why Will was so eager to defend him to Hop.

“Hey, grab a jacket before we go.”

“Okay,” Will sighs, ducking into his room. “Don’t leave without me!”

“Going to see Billy?”

Jonathan startles and turns, smiling at El where she’s standing at the end of the hallway watching him. He says, “Yeah, we’re gonna take him to Steve’s car so they can trade back. I don’t suppose you wanna come along?”

She shakes her head. “Can’t. Too public.”

“I wish I could use that argument on Will,” he murmurs.

Her head tilts to one side. “Why?”

Will steps out of his room still zipping up his jacket. He looks up at Jonathan and then over at her, his face lighting up. “Do you wanna come with us to pick Billy up?”

“Yes.” El smiles, just a small one. “But I can’t.”

“Aww. Well, I guess that makes sense. Are you ready, Jonathan?”

“I gotta find my keys.”

“They’re probably on your dresser. I’m gonna wait outside. Are you sure you can’t come with us? It’s just a quick drive. Maybe Hop’ll say yes if we team up on him…”

Jonathan tunes them out as he heads back into his room. He checks where Will said but doesn’t see them. He pats his pockets down and checks his nightstand. That turns up nothing either, so he digs around in the drawer at his desk. He turns out his pockets, confused, and then he hears metallic jangling over his shoulder. He looks around and sees his keys floating in midair.

“Uh — ”

“Underneath,” El explains, moving her hand so the keys float over to him. She wipes at her nose. “Lots of books,” she says, nodding at the pile on his dresser.

“Oh,” Jonathan mumbles, catching his keys and pocketing them. “Yeah, I kind of raided the photography section at the library.” He holds up his camera to show her. “It’s sorta my thing.”

El strides into his room, eyes on nothing but the camera Nancy gave him for Christmas nearly a year ago. “Pictures,” she says, half a question.

“Yeah, pictures. I have a few if you want to look. That oughta hold you over till we get back.”

She nods, and like this, without the makeup or that harassed look edging into her eyes, she looks so young. Between her big, curious eyes and her unabashed curiosity, she reminds him of Will. He scrounges around in a desk drawer for the portfolio with all his favorite shots and hands it to her.

“Pictures,” she says again, grinning and flipping eagerly to the first photograph — a candid of Mom in the yard planting hollyhocks in the backyard. She turns to one of Nancy and Barb with blotchy stains on their hands and clothes from helping Mom repaint the kitchen cabinets. “Pretty.”

“They are,” he agrees. “I gotta head out, but go ahead and look through the rest of those if you want. I don’t mind.”

Still studying the picture of Nancy with Barb, she murmurs, “Okay. Be careful.”

“Yeah, we will. Thanks. Um, and for last night, too. Thank you.”

El’s eyes are wide and unassuming when she looks up at him. She nods, idly turning to the next photograph — one of Will and Barb sitting in Castle Byers that Jonathan, admittedly, had to creep up on them to get. El touches the picture, traces the slanted wall of the fort with one finger, and says, “I’m glad Will’s safe.”

Jonathan stalls with his hand on the door frame. She turns to the next picture, and his eyes catch on a Will carefully mixing his watercolor paints. Warmth spreads behind his ribs, and he feels the way Mom sounds when she’s got a hand in his hair or Will’s and she’s saying, _Oh,_ like it encompasses everything that came before and everything there is now and everything that’ll come after. Like maybe it’s all those things all the time because that love, that instinct to protect and guide and comfort, never diminishes. Not ever.

El follows his eyes to the picture. “You have to go,” she reminds him, voice soft. “Billy.”

He walks out into the hallway with her, mulling over yet another voice in defense of Billy Hargrove. He doesn’t get it.

The front door swings open right as they get out into the living room. Will looks at him, cheeks flushed from the cold, and asks, “Are we going?”

“We’re going. I didn’t forget.”

“Okay, well, let’s go then. C’mon.”

Jonathan takes one backward glance at El sitting down to flip through his portfolio. Kali approaches from behind and stands with her arms on the couch over El’s head, peering down at Jonathan’s pictures with her. By the time he gets a foot out the door, Will’s halfway to the car again.

“Were your keys on the dresser?” he asks, pulling open his door.

“They’re always right where you say they’ll be,” Jonathan points out. He starts the car and gets the heat going. While they’re waiting for the car to warm up, he figures he can use this time to just come right out and ask the question that’s been on his mind. “So is there a reason you wanna go with me? I know you hate being on bedrest, but Kali and El seem nice.”

“They are nice,” Will says.

“Yeah? So?”

Will looks over at him. He holds his hands out in front of the vents to test the air coming out and positions them away from himself. Still too cold. He shrugs. “Billy’s… different from what I thought.”

“How do you mean?”

“He just seemed really mean before, I guess.”

Yeah, that part Jonathan gets. He can count the number of conversations he’s had with Billy Hargrove on one hand, and of those, they’ve been either lukewarm or incendiary with nothing in between. “When would you have even seen him before last night?”

“Picking up Max from school,” he answers nonchalantly. He tests the vents again and points them at himself, keeping his hands up to warm his knuckles. “We’ve seen him driving her to the arcade, too.”

Jonathan hums thoughtfully, backing out of the driveway and onto the dirt road. He feels a pang of guilt then, thinking of all the times Will’s had to look out for himself or get around on his own. He snaps out of it a second later, knowing better than to put that weight on Will when he carries so much of his own already. “Is that why you stood up for him?”

“You heard what happened at the junkyard,” Will answers, and it only sounds a little bit like a deflection. “He’s part of it now.”

“Fair point.”

Jonathan turns right onto a paved road and follows the street names. He dares to ask, “How do you feel?”

“Fine. _Not_ _tired_ ,” Will intones with a look on his face that makes Jonathan laugh. He even unzips his jacket, pointed, like a small act of rebellion.

“Okay, you’re not tired,” Jonathan relents, waving his hand in surrender. “But other than that. You’re really fine? You’re not just saying that?”

“I’m not just saying it. I’m really fine.”

“All right. Well, you know the drill if that changes.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles, visibly relaxing in his seat. “I know.”

The rest of the drive to Billy’s house is quiet, but not in a bad way. Will bounces between radio stations, keeping the volume turned down low so that it’s nothing more than a tinny murmur. He ticks it up slightly when he finds one playing The Who. A few blocks out from their destination, Jonathan thinks back to the look on El’s face when they invited her to join them for the ride. He thinks about the worry in Steve’s eyes, his clipped start-and-stop explanation for why he couldn’t go get Billy himself, as much as it seemed like he genuinely wanted to. He thinks about the way Billy didn’t even look up when the dead dog came flying through the window. Like the idea of getting torn up by dogs didn’t scare him a bit.

How’s that even possible? It’s one thing to try and start a fight at a house party, but to not even flinch when the glass shattered and that thing hit the floor? That’s crazy.

“Maybe you should wait in the car when we get there,” he tries, remembering the cavalcade that took Max and Billy home earlier. He wonders if maybe he should’ve asked Mom to come with them.

“No,” Will says, straight away. Not a single ounce of doubt or hesitation, and no room for arguments. “Mom wouldn’t tell me anything about this morning, but anybody could tell it was a big deal from how she and Bob and Hop were talking. Can’t you pretty much guess why? It seems obvious to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Really, Jonathan?” Will looks at him, bland and disappointed in turns. “Dad.”

And — well, yeah.

Jonathan’s maybe avoided being curious about Billy’s situation for that very reason. He remembers how quiet Will would get if Dad had been screaming at Mom on any given day, and how, even if he wasn’t yelling, his words would usually leave behind a different kind of mark.

Will breaks his heart open again a second later, without knowing he’s doing it. Low and even, he says, “He never did anything where people could see. I doubt Billy’s dad does either.”

So that’s it. The reason Will cares if Billy has somewhere soft and warm to sleep. The reason he’d go to bat for him when he’s spoken to Billy maybe only once before. The reason he sees so much of himself in someone he can’t claim to know. Jonathan understands. He wishes he didn’t, but here they are.

“Hey, that’s it!” Will points out. He wastes no time running out ahead of Jonathan to ring on the doorbell.

“Jeez, hang on!”

“Told you I’m feeling better,” Will answers brightly.

Honestly. Butter wouldn’t melt.

Jonathan doesn’t know who he gets that from, but whoever it was, they didn’t pass it onto Jonathan. He’s about to make a comment to that effect when a woman opens the door. She looks out at them expectantly.

“Can I help you boys?”

“We’re here for Billy,” Will announces judiciously.

Jonathan cuts a glance at him, but Will doesn’t back down.

“Oh, well, he’s grounded,” she tells them apologetically. “What are your names? I can tell him you stopped by.”

“Who’s that at the door, Susan? Yes?”

“Hi, Mr. Hargrove,” Jonathan says, relaxing his jaw. “I’m Jonathan Byers. This is my brother Will.”

“You’re the one who was sick,” he summarizes, honing in on Will. “Met your parents. Nice people. What do you want with Billy?”

“His car’s at the lab. There was a chemical breach last night, and they had to lock everything down,” Will says gravely, easily spinning a story. “It’s authorized personnel only, so nobody but Billy can sign it out. Right, Jonathan?”

Baffled, Jonathan nods.

“Sign it out?” Mr. Hargrove repeats dubiously.

“It’s part of an official investigation now. We’re not allowed to say why, but — ”

“Zombie Boy!” Max calls out, easily inserting herself in between the adults crowding the door. “I thought you’d still be taking it easy. Hardcore, Byers.”

“Max,” Susan starts, but Mr. Hargrove waves her off.

“Max, would you mind calling my son out here?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right back,” she says, inching past them again to disappear back into the house.

“Are you sure about this, Neil?”

“He’s gonna need his car to get him and Max to school. Right, son?”

Jonathan makes himself smile. “Yes, sir.”

“Mmhmm. _Yes, sir,_ ” he parrots, smiling faintly, but he gets a look about him that Jonathan doesn’t like. “Guess you know Billy from school. That it?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh, no?”

“Jonathan finished early so he could work instead.”

“Very noble of you. Wish mine would get a job. Here he is. Billy, they’re taking you to pick up your car, and then you’re coming straight back home. Do you understand me?”

Billy stares at him for a second and stiffly replies, “Yes, sir. I understand.”

“Good. Get going. If you’re not back in half an hour, I’ll get Officer Friendly on the phone and see if he can tell me why my son can’t keep his curfew twice in as many days.”

Jonathan steps back to let Billy pass. He doesn’t move quickly enough, and for a second he thinks they’ll collide, but Billy twists away at the last second so they only brush arms instead of crashing into each other.

“You coming, Byers? I’m on a timetable here,” he mutters.

“Yeah, Jonathan, come on.”

Will climbs into the backseat, and Billy spares him a conflicted glance before he climbs into the front seat. Jonathan starts the car again and gets them headed in the direction of Heathrow. Billy clocks their surroundings and sinks back in his seat without asking. Jonathan takes that as permission to stick to the plan. When his dad issued the time limit, he thought Billy might ask to go directly to his car, but he seems all right with going to grab Steve’s car first.

“Hey, Billy?”

Jonathan checks Will in the rearview mirror and then over at Billy. He’s turned toward the window, and he doesn’t react when Will calls his name again. Jonathan bites his cheek. Nobody rides in his car and gets away with ignoring his brother. He leans over in his seat and elbows Billy in the ribs to get his attention.

Billy turns his head, and while he’s clearly surprised, he doesn’t look pissed off. Jonathan blinks at him and looks back at the road. When he glances at Billy again, there’s an assessing look sharpening his eyes.

“Yeah, Byers?” he says.

“My brother was trying to talk to you,” Jonathan blurts out, squinting. Did he say something funny?

He turns in his seat so he’s facing the backseat. “What’s up, little man?”

“You should really put your seatbelt on — ”

“I was just gonna ask if you’re okay,” Will says, sounding every bit as young as he is. “Dustin and Lucas told me more about the fight with the dogs this morning. Did you really use a car door as a shield?”

“Uh…” Billy levels a look at Jonathan.

“Nothing you say’s gonna surprise him,” Jonathan says, glancing at Will one more time in the mirror before looking at Billy again. “Max doesn’t have a radio, does she? You should get her one. That way they can all communicate.”

“What, like a CB radio? ‘Breaker, breaker?’”

“Nobody actually says that except truckers,” Will informs him, helpfully, he must think. “Well, no, I’ve heard Mike do it on the big radio at school, but just as a joke.”

Whatever he feels, Billy _looks_ entertained. He’s still twisted around in his seat to look at Will, and something — Jonathan hesitates to call it tenderness — crosses his face. Will never goes out of his way to charm people, but he seems to be having that effect on Billy. Jonathan’s fascinated.

“Steve helped me pry it off an old Buick. Worked in a pinch.”

“Cool,” Will gushes, and Jonathan can see his quick smile in the mirror.

“Not as cool as that bat he’s got. Have you seen that shit?”

Will’s voice goes sly like he’s telling a secret. “Jonathan’s the one who made it.”

Billy twists around to sit sideways in his seat. His eyebrows are high up on his forehead. “That true, Byers?”

“I made it. He’s the one who ended up using it.”

“Pretty damn vicious,” Billy notes. “I doubt he’d’ve had the idea on his own.”

Jonathan huffs a rueful laugh. He wonders what it is that makes Billy Hargrove of all people so sure. “I never would’ve thought the two of you would be friends.”

“What can I say,” Billy drawls. “We’re assholes in recovery.”

From the backseat Will snorts, and Billy’s gaze lights over him again. He just watches him for a few long seconds before coming to some kind of decision.

“Hey, kid.”

“Yeah, Billy?”

Billy takes a breath and looks from him to Jonathan and back. “That day on the road. I’m sorry.”

“There was a day on the road?” Jonathan repeats, turning in his seat to look at Will. He swivels back around to the front and brings the car to an abrupt halt several feet shy of a stop sign. “What day on the road?”

“They were on their bikes, and I didn’t stop.”

Jonathan stares at him. “What do you mean, you didn’t stop.”

“I mean I made like I was gonna hit ’em, Byers,” he says, calm as anything.

Jonathan thinks back to that night with Billy buzzed and grinning and spoiling for a fight. The whole time Jonathan had been trying to be the bigger man, Billy had stood across from him knowing all the while what he did. That he’d nearly mown his brother down however many hours earlier.

Billy must be remembering the same exact thing because he keeps just looking at Jonathan, steady, steady. He says, “We gonna have that fight now, Byers?”

If they weren’t stopped in the middle of the road, the answer would be yes. There wouldn’t even have been the space of a breath to allow for words at all. His heart takes off in his chest, faster and faster.

Jonathan doesn’t make a habit of using his fists just because he’s mad, but he’s still the guy who busted up Steve’s face last year, isn’t he? It’s pretty much par for the course when it’s his brother on the line.

Will’s name in Steve’s mouth, and now in Billy’s —

A car behind them honks.

“Jonathan,” Will’s saying over the roaring in Jonathan’s ears. “It’s okay. He didn’t hit us.”

He sounds like he really honestly doesn’t have any hard feelings about it, and knowing Will, that’s probably true. Jonathan can’t speak either way. He steps hard on the gas and blows through the stop sign. He’ll try again for words when they get to the train tracks since it’s gonna take him that long to unclench his jaw. Even Will seems to get that Jonathan’s not in a negotiating mood because he stops trying to convince him.

Billy doesn’t share Will’s sense for navigating Jonathan’s moods. He muses, “Offer stands. I’ll let you have the first punch.”

“I’m not gonna fight you,” Jonathan grits out.

“Why not?” he asks easily, and all Jonathan can hear is how quiet Will’s gone in the backseat. “It was good enough for Steve, wasn’t it?”

 _I shouldn’t have done that,_ sticks in his throat. Even now, even liking Steve a whole hell of a lot better than he used to, he’s not sure he regrets how he reacted. Anyone in his shoes would’ve felt the way he did, and anyone who felt the way he did would’ve had to do _something_.

Heathrow’s around the corner when he can finally stand to look at Billy. He’s already watching him back, something focused and intentional in the grim set of his mouth.

“I’m trying here, man,” he says.

Jonathan pulls up behind Steve’s car and lets the engine idle. He shakes his head. “Just get out of my car.”

Will waits until Billy’s climbed out and shut his door to start protesting, but Jonathan’s outside before he can even finish calling out for him.

Decided, Jonathan calls out a name, too. Says, “Billy.”

He turns, and Jonathan punches him right in the mouth.

His head turns with the blow. He rocks back on his heels and steps out with his left foot. Half a smile blooms on his face, bloody at one jagged corner. Billy swipes a thumb at his lip and gets a speculative look at the smeared ribbon it paints across his knuckles. His eyes are clear and his shoulders are rolled back, not at all like he’s gearing up to hit Jonathan back.

Distantly, Jonathan’s aware of Will getting out of the car behind him. Billy runs his tongue over his teeth.

“Nice. Feel better?”

Jonathan rolls his shoulders back, too. He does feel a little bit better. “Yeah.”

“Sweet. Thanks for the ride.”

“We’re gonna follow you back to Steve’s,” Jonathan tells him, shaking out his hand. Two of his knuckles are torn up. “Make sure you get home in one piece.”

“You wanna wipe my ass for me, too, Byers?” he asks without heat. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“No, we’re even,” Jonathan assures him, glancing over his shoulder at Will and nodding for him to get back in the car. He turns back to Billy and lowers his voice. “I don’t know if you missed it, Billy, but for some reason my brother likes you, so we’re gonna take you to your car and see you home. We’re down to fifteen minutes, by the way, so you’d better get moving if you wanna be back on time.”

Billy rolls his eyes but doesn’t comment further. Jonathan gets back in his car and pulls out onto the road behind the BMW.

“Are you gonna tell Mom?” Will asks, low, a few miles later.

“I can’t believe _you_ _didn’t_ ,” Jonathan mutters.

The ensuing silence is enough of an answer. Of course Will didn’t tell Mom he almost got run over on Halloween. Of course he didn’t tell Jonathan. He wanted to go trick or treating. He wanted to have a normal life where he wasn’t constantly under lock and key waiting for the next big tragedy to hit.

Jonathan sighs, and he’s about to go on a long rant about why Mom needs to know these things when Will folds his arms and beats him to it.

“We used to just think he was crazy, before. But I don’t think that anymore.”

“What do you think now?” Jonathan asks, bewildered. He used to think Billy was crazy, too. He’s not sure he doesn’t still. The evidence against him is certainly overwhelming.

“Now I just feel bad for him,” he hedges with a shrug. “I think… he chose a lot of it, but he’s choosing _this_ now. Don’t you believe people can change? Look at Steve.”

“That’s different, Will.”

“Why is it different?”

“Because Steve didn’t try to kill you!”

“Okay, then why did you mess up his face?” Will asks, using his eyes more than his voice to challenge Jonathan. He doesn’t seem up for anything more strenuous than a strongly worded conversation, but Will’s never needed to raise his voice to make his point. Not when he could raise his words instead. “If what Billy did was worse, why’d you let him off so easily?”

That trips Jonathan up, only for a moment, but it’s enough. Will latches onto that chink in his armor.

“It’s because he’s sorry, Jonathan, and even if you don’t want to take his word for it, you can tell he means it. He does, or else why would he say it in front of you _and then_ _ask you_ _to hit him?”_

Jonathan knows he’s right, but he doesn’t want to admit it. He wants to be _angry_ first.

“Look, I’m not saying he can’t clean up his act or _be_ _a better person_ if that’s what he’s made up his mind to do. But do you really think Mom would’ve let him stay last night if she knew what he did? Do you think Hop would’ve?”

“Hop wanted to kick him out anyway,” Will says, sullen.

“Okay, well, what about Mom?”

 _“I don’t know, Jonathan,”_ he relents, sounding really distressed for the first time. “I don’t want her not to like him. What does it matter how he was if he’s not going to be like that anymore?”

Jonathan runs a hand through his hair, conflicted. He can see why Will’s upset, as much as he’d like to pretend that he doesn’t get it. He sighs and turns onto Steve’s street. “Look, you know Mom. She’s got a big heart, too, and she wants to give Billy a chance just like you do, but you can’t make this decision for her. It’s the same as lying.”

He knows Will’s had a lot of practice underselling his aches and pains to make life easier on them, but he doesn’t point it out. It’s not surprising in the slightest that Will’s still holding out on them even though he promised he was going to try to be better about keeping them in the loop and being honest. Old habits die hard.

“You’re not just saying that so you can both be mad at him together?” Will grumbles.

“No, I’m not. C’mon, give me some credit here.”

Up a ways ahead of them, Billy pulls into the empty driveway in front of Steve’s house. The Camaro’s parked sensibly on the curb for an easy getaway. Jonathan parks in the street behind it.

The door to Steve’s house swings wide open right as Billy steps out onto the grass. They toss their keys at the same time, and both of them sail in twin arcs to their respective owners. Steve holds his hands out in question when Billy just keeps walking without stopping to talk to him. Will rolls his window down.

“Hey, Steve!”

“Hey! Just a sec — Billy, what — ”

“He’s gotta get home. His dad gave him a time limit,” Will explains handily, even as Billy races off down the street. “We would’ve gotten here sooner, but Jonathan took a pit stop to punch him.”

Steve looks past Will to Jonathan. He bends down to talk through the window. “Halloween?”

Jonathan scoffs, incredulous. “You knew?”

“Dustin told me. Uh, I guess it was a couple days ago? When his dog or whatever got out.”

That soothes the itch picking up under Jonathan’s skin. “What’d he say to you about it?”

Steve flaps his hand and looks away. When he turns back to face them, his eyes catch on Will’s. “He said he ran you guys off the road.”

“And you’re all right with that?”

“No, Byers, actually I’m not. I told him he’d better apologize, or people wouldn’t believe he’s not still an asshole.”

“See?” Will says, rounding on Jonathan. _“He’s trying.”_

“I still wanna tell Mom,” Jonathan insists, sliding his gaze over to Steve, checking to see if he’ll argue on Billy’s behalf.

He doesn’t look too concerned, though. He doesn’t react at all until Will turns on him with pleading eyes.

“I keep telling him I don’t want to, but he won’t listen.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing,” Steve says breezily on a shrug. “I’m not looking forward to Nancy finding out,” he adds, trailing off and staring into the middle distance with a faint look of terror on his face. “Yeah, that’s… uh, but… well, you can’t make anything right if you don’t air it out first. Otherwise, you’re not really making it right, are you? Pave over a sinkhole, it’s still a sinkhole, y’know?”

Will doesn’t come back at him with anything. He doesn’t even pout. Jonathan doesn’t know what to say either. In that light, the last of the fight drains out of him. He’s still angry, but in a muted way.

“What?” Steve looks between them. “I got it, didn’t I? We _just_ covered sinkholes in Scofield’s class — ”

“No, you got it right, Steve,” Will tells him, half-smiling. He glances at Jonathan and lifts one shoulder. “He did, didn’t he?”

Jonathan nods. He doesn’t remember reading about sinkholes when he was prepping for his GED, but that’s not what Will’s asking him. He glances up at Steve, less reluctantly than he thought, and says, “Yeah, Steve. Good call.”

“I’m gonna ace that test,” Steve says, grinning, already so far off the topic of Billy getting punched in the face that he doesn’t look worried at all. “Hey, Byers. Thanks for bringing him. It means a lot.”

“Sure, it was no problem.” Jonathan’s surprised to find that it’s the truth. “We’re gonna loop back and make sure he got home okay.”

“Cool. Thanks again. See you guys.”

“Bye, Steve!”

They ride in silence back to Billy’s house. Jonathan makes it to his street, gets a look at the Camaro parked outside the house, and waits for a minute on the corner. After a long pause just sat behind the wheel with his leg hanging out the door, Billy gets out of the car and freezes in place, noticing Jonathan’s car. He holds his hand up in a wave, visibly startled even from a distance. Jonathan waves back, less enthusiastically than Will, but at least he’s polite about it, and steers them back in the direction of home.

“Can we at least wait until Hop’s not around?” Will asks, more neutral now that they’ve found themselves more or less on the same page. “He already doesn’t trust Billy. This is just gonna make him think he’s right.”

“I don’t think you’re doing him any favors by covering for him, Will.”

“But you at least get it, don’t you? I know you’re mad. I would be, too, if I found out he tried to hurt you, _but he didn’t hurt me._ You’ve seen him. Do you honestly think he’s gonna do something like that again?”

No, he doesn’t, but that doesn’t change that it happened.

“If Dad came back,” Jonathan starts, thinking maybe it’s safe to go there since Will went there first. “If he came back tomorrow saying he’d changed and everything was gonna be different this time around, would you believe him?”

Quietly, Will says, “I’d want to.”

“But it wouldn’t be that easy, would it?” Jonathan asks, gentle.

“It’s not the same, Jonathan,” Will counters, looking away as his voice gets thicker and begins to wobble. “Dad always just wants to start over and act like he didn’t do anything wrong. Dad — makes it your fault or Mom’s, or…” He rubs at his face, looking resolutely out the window. “He never means it.”

“Will.” Jonathan reaches for his shoulder. “Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset.” He rubs at his face again, and when he turns to face the front again, Jonathan can see that he smeared a few tears just under his eye. “But it’s not the same.”

“Okay,” he relents, soft. “If you say it’s not the same, it’s not the same.”

“ _It’s not._ I’ll tell Mom, but you’re on your own if you want to tell Hop.”

Jonathan tries to imagine his reaction. He tries to imagine Billy’s.

Would he swagger up to Hop and ask nicely for his punishment? He doesn’t think so. He doesn’t _know_ , but he doesn’t think so.

Back at the house, everything’s the same except now Mike’s bike is lying on its side a few feet away from the door. Usually now’s the time when he’d run outside to meet them, but Jonathan turns the engine off, and the only noise filling the late morning is the birds in the trees.

“Bob and Hop must still be at the store.”

“What?” Will blinks at him, distracted.

“Bob and Hop,” Jonathan repeats. “They’re not back yet.”

“Oh.” He nods, still a little unfocused. “Yeah.”

With the intention of assuaging the frown on Will’s face, he says, “Hey, why don’t we just wait until tonight to say anything? It’s gonna be a long day. I mean, we gotta clean up the house, and Hop asked me to help him replace the windows at the cabin later, too.”

Will nods more animatedly this time. “Yeah, okay.”

“Okay, good. Let’s go.”

They make their way back into the house. It’s a mess of crayon drawings and maps and some dried gunk that might be blood. The space in front of the couch is totally free of clutter thanks entirely to Max clearing it out to have a place to sleep. Mom had given her a few better options, but Max had wanted to be close to Billy, and it’s not like he was around to try and talk her out of it.

It was kind of sweet, actually. Jonathan doesn’t know if having a sister is exactly like having a brother, but it looked pretty special from the outside.

The first person to spot them coming through the door is El. She looks up at them from her place on the middle of the couch. His portfolio is still laid open in her lap, and Kali and Mike are on either side of her. They look up a second later, and Mike’s face lights up.

“Will!”

Jonathan sidesteps the huge hug Mike throws on Will. Even backing away, he can see the pinched tight look on Will’s face. He’s trying his best to cover it with a smile, but it’s like Steve said. Paving over a sinkhole doesn’t stop it being a sinkhole. He must really be worried about the thing with Billy.

“Hey,” he says, smiling bigger when Mike pulls away to look at him.

“Are you feeling better? I tried to get you on the radio earlier, but I guess you’d left already. You didn’t tell me El was here!”

“I was gonna tell you when we got back.”

“We were in a bit of a rush,” Jonathan adds, hanging up his jacket and getting Will’s, too. “Where’s Dustin and Lucas?”

“Probably on their way.”

El stands from the couch. “Is Billy okay?”

Will looks at Jonathan and then at her. He says, “Yeah, he has his car back, and we made sure he got home. What’s that?”

She gives him the portfolio, holding Kali’s hand when she soundlessly steps in beside her. Mike appears at his shoulder and flips around to a picture toward the middle. It’s a shot of Will in Barb’s Cabrio smiling with his whole face. Barb’s in the passenger’s seat beside him, caught in a laugh.

“This one’s my favorite,” Mike tells him, beaming. “Look how happy you look.”

Jonathan tamps down his smile and sneaks off into the kitchen. Mom’s sitting at the table with a cup of coffee in front of her. He pours one for himself and sits down next to her.

“How’d it go?” she asks him.

“Fine. We saw Max for a second. I guess Billy’s grounded, though.”

“But his dad still let him pick up his car?” she says dubiously, worrying the chain on the necklace Barb gave her for Christmas last year. The blade’s safely tucked away, like always.

“Um, yeah, he said something about Billy needing it to get to school.”

She rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t look surprised. “Well, what about Billy? Did he say anything?”

Jonathan takes a slow drink of coffee and makes a noncommittal gesture with his hand.

“What does that mean?” Mom asks, halfway to frustrated but not quite committing to it. “He was in the car with you. He must’ve said something.”

“Can I tell you later? I promised Will we’d wait.”

“Why? It doesn’t have to do with his dad, does it?”

“No, Mom, it’s something else. It’s… Will just doesn’t want to make a big thing out of it, and we’ve already got so much stuff to do today anyway, so I kinda agree with him.”

“Jonathan, you know it makes me nervous when you boys do this.”

“Do what?”

“This!” She gestures at him with both hands. “Talk in circles like there’s some _big_ _mystery_ you can’t tell me about.”

“It’s nothing like that,” he soothes, covering her hands. “No one’s hurt or in danger or anything.”

“Are you sure?” she asks, tentative, worried. “It’s not… Upside Down-related?”

“It’s not Upside Down-related.”

She relaxes, if only slightly, and turns her hands underneath his. “I know we got him back and El closed the gate, but it’s hard to believe it’s actually over. I mean, I’m glad. _I’m_ _relieved_ , but what are we supposed to do now? This has been running our lives for months now.”

“Try to get back to normal,” Jonathan says, smiling. “Clean the house. Try not to crowd Will too much.”

Mom gives a sheepish nod. Her eyes jump in the direction of laughter coming from the living room. It sounds like El. He wonders if they’re still poring over his pictures.

“They’re sweet, aren’t they? The girls.”

“Yeah, they seem nice.”

“I’m happy he’s making friends. At least one good thing came out of all this.”

“I feel like maybe a few good things came out of it,” Jonathan amends, hearing Kali laugh, too.

There’s noise at the front of the house, and a second later they can hear Bob struggling with the door. Mom downs her coffee, already rising from the table. Jonathan lets her go ahead of him and follows outside to help bring in the supplies Bob and Hop brought back with them.

* * *

Getting the window fixed is hard work. Jonathan pays close attention to the whole process from beginning to end. He wants to be able to do it himself if there’s ever another need for it.

He helps Bob and Hop with the window while Mom and Kali clear out all the furniture so they have a clear space to work in. Will works on rounding up his drawings with Mike and El’s help.

By the time all the repairs are more or less complete and the house looks more like a place where people actually live, Lucas and Dustin show up. They bike through the break in the trees and up the driveway. Mike leans on the broom he’s been using to sweep up the last of the dirt and sawdust, brushing hair out of his eyes.

“Oh, that figures,” he sighs, put out. “Now that we already got all the heavy lifting out of the way.”

Hop snorts, dusting his hands off. “Speak for yourself, kid.”

Mike makes a bland face at him and heads outside to greet Dustin and Lucas. They linger on the porch, talking.

Jonathan boxes up the leftover caulk and putty, keeping them on opposite sides of the box so they don’t get mixed up later. He straightens out and looks at Hop, saying, “I figure we’ll break for lunch, and then we can head up to the cabin?”

“Sounds good. You already take care of the other thing?”

“Huh? Oh.” He doesn’t mean to, but he flexes his hand awkwardly, remembering.

Mike chooses that moment to open the door for Lucas to follow him inside. Dustin makes quick work of propping his bike up against the side of the house before heading in after them. He spots El and Kali and waves excitedly, beaming at both of them. Bob passes by to carry the boxes back out to Hop’s truck, and Dustin holds the door for him.

Even in spite of the distraction, Hop’s not to be distracted from Jonathan’s knuckles. He tips his chin at them. “Something you wanna share with the class there, Jonathan?”

Drawing his hand behind his back is an even worse move, but he can’t help it.

Mom frowns at him and grabs his hand, murmuring, “You didn’t have these last night… Jonathan, did you and Billy fight?”

“It wasn’t a fight,” Will says without looking up from his dismantled map.

Mike’s face lights up, and Jonathan knows what he’s going to do before he even opens his mouth to speak. “Wait, no way. Really? Man, I’m glad _somebody_ got to punch him.”

Will seems to get what Mike’s about to do, too, because his head snaps up. “Mike, don’t — ”

“What do you mean you’re glad?” Hop asks, steadily, in that neutral, blankly probing tone of voice Jonathan remembers hearing at the police station when he had blood on his face and a bear trap in his trunk.

“ _Mike —_ ” Will tries.

“Because he almost killed us on Halloween! He’s a maniac!”

Mom goes very still, and so does Hop. Jonathan’s heart’s beating really fast in his chest all of a sudden, and he doesn’t know why that should be when this is what he wanted. He didn’t want to do it like this, though. Not when Will was so determined to wait and get the truth out on his own terms.

“He did apologize,” Dustin cuts in, diplomatically.

“Yeah, to you,” Mike grouses.

“He apologized to me, too,” Will adds quietly.

Mike throws his hands. “What the hell?”

“Back up. Somebody tell me right now what’s going on. You,” Hop says, pointing at Lucas.

He jumps under Hop’s attention and panicking, tries to come up with a coherent response. “Well, I-I don’t know, we were biking home from school like any other day, and he just came flying down the road like he was trying to hit us. As in, _he_ _sped up_ when he saw us. We had to dump our bikes off the side of the road to get out of the way.”

 _“He what?”_ Mom turns on Jonathan and then on Will, who shrinks away from her. “And you didn’t tell me? What are you thinking, Will? How could you not _say anything?_ ”

His eyes get big and round. “You would’ve been mad!”

_“You’re damn right I would’ve been mad!”_

Hop holds up his hands. “Joyce — ”

Bob bursts in through the door. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, what’s going on? What happened?”

“Billy Hargrove ran my boy off the road _weeks ago_ , and I’m only just hearing about it!” Mom shouts, patting down her pockets and the couch and upending the contents of her purse to look for her keys.

Will watches her, jaw tight, and doesn’t say a word. Hop crosses his arms over his chest and looks from Mom to Kali, who’s got her hands folded together in front of her mouth, eyes looking more inward than at anything around her.

Bob sighs and pulls the door gently closed. “Ah, geez. He seemed like a nice kid.”

“I’m gonna kill that boy,” Mom mutters, and Jonathan can see her hands shaking. “ _Put my son in danger,_ after everything he’s been through. I’m gonna kill him.” She falters, covers her mouth with her hand, and abandons her search for her keys. When she speaks again, her voice comes out strained and like she’s trying very hard not to cry. “Will, I need you to tell me these things.”

Will stares hard at his hands in his lap and doesn’t look up. Lucas has his arms wrapped tightly around himself, clearly uncomfortable with the turn the conversation’s taken. Dustin gives Mike a dirty look that Mike answers with a more mocking one. Jonathan might’ve guessed it’d go like this.

“Is this — this is what you were going to tell me later,” she says, wheeling around to look at him.

He can’t seem to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth, so he just nods. She closes her eyes, pained at the confirmation, and shakes her head.

“Both of you,” she says, mouth scrunching up at the corners and eyes shining. “Okay.”

Bob gently takes hold of her hands. “Joyce, let’s just think about this for a second. You’re not really gonna drive over there and give Neil Hargrove a piece of your mind, are you?”

“No,” she admits, frowning and pressing her fingers to the space between her eyebrows. “I should! But no, I’m not.”

“Why don’t we take this outside, huh?” Hop suggests, motioning toward the door.

Mom nods and lets Bob walk her outside. Hop sighs wearily, letting the door swing shut behind him.

“Way to go, Mike,” Dustin snaps.

“What do you mean, _Way to go, Mike?_ ” he cuts back. “You were thinking it!”

“No, actually, I wasn’t, and if you’d listened to Will, you would’ve _heard_ that he was _trying_ — ”

“To do what? Defend that creep? Fat chance! Will, tell him!”

Will presses his lips together. He’s gone back to being so pale, and Jonathan doesn’t know how to help him. Mike huffs an impatient sigh.

“Will, come on, you don’t actually believe he’s sorry, do you? Just because he said it in front of Jonathan? As if that means anything?”

“I already told you, he apologized to me, too!” Dustin reminds him.

“Yeah, _and Steve was_ _right there_. Do you honestly think it would’ve even occurred to him if he didn’t have an audience?”

“But he had to know Jonathan was gonna punch his lights out,” Lucas points out, glancing at Jonathan. “No offense. Why do that if he didn’t mean it?”

“Hello? This is Billy Hargrove we’re talking about? He probably just wanted an excuse to start a fight.”

Dustin rolls his eyes. “But Will said they _didn’t fight_.”

“It’s true,” Jonathan sighs, tired all of a sudden. “He let me hit him. He even asked me to do it.”

“Will — ”

“Enough,” Kali murmurs, without bothering to raise her voice. “Can’t you see this is upsetting him?”

Mike deflates, but he doesn’t lose all of his fight, not yet. “If you knew what Billy Hargrove was like, you wouldn’t be defending him.”

“And if you did,” she muses, eyes razor sharp. “I doubt you would be so eager to draw blood.”

“What does _that_ mean?” he mutters under his breath.

“Friends don’t lie,” El says, so quietly Jonathan almost misses it. She looks searchingly at Mike and then at Will. “New or old.”

The stoniness in Will’s face shivers into a smile, a small one. Jonathan should’ve known that would end up being a part of it.

He can’t fault Will for wanting to believe the best in Billy and wanting his remorse to be genuine. He’s been let down a lot in his life, and his friendships have come to mean nearly as much to him as family. Jonathan peers outside, trying to guess from body language alone what tack Bob and Hop are taking with Mom.

Bob has a thoughtful look on his face, arms crossed over his chest, Hop’s shaking his head blearily with his hands on his hips, and Mom’s gesturing wildly between the house and the driveway. Whether she’s indicating all of Hawkins or the Upside Down or the world at large, Jonathan can’t guess.

“Whatever happens, Billy’s gonna be stuck at home for the foreseeable future, so…” Jonathan turns to address the room. “At least that’ll give Mom some time to cool down.”

“Optimism,” Dustin observes. “I like it.”

The front door opens a while later. Nobody had been talking for a little while anyway, but the room gets even more silent and tense when Mom walks in. She stalls by the coatrack.

“Are you kids hungry?”

Jonathan keeps his voice soft. “I can make lunch, Mom.”

She nods and walks down the hallway. He only hears the door to her bedroom open and close because he’s listening for it. Jonathan looks outside, and Hop’s leaned up against his truck smoking a cigarette. He tries to pass it to Bob, but he just waves him off.

“How do you guys feel about sandwiches?”

Dustin shrugs. “Solid plan.”

“I make a mean grilled cheese,” Lucas offers. “Just throwing that out there.”

Jonathan gives Will a quick look that he hopes says something like, _You better go in there and apologize. If Billy Hargrove can take a sucker punch, you can talk to Mom._

Apparently he gets his point across because Will drags himself onto his feet and disappears down the hallway.

“Does grilled cheese sound okay?” he asks Kali and El, even as he can hear Lucas banging around in the cupboards and Dustin riffling through the fridge.

El nods easily, and Kali smiles. Jonathan smiles back. They really do seem sweet, the both of them.

Mike passes him on his way into the kitchen to put the broom back behind the fridge. He doesn’t bring up the incident again, but Jonathan can see him thinking about it. He knows how mad he is and how mad Mom must be, but from the sound of things, Billy really is trying to turn his act around. That’s worth something. It has to be.

Still, Jonathan kind of wishes he’d hit him harder.

He gets the kids fed and scrounges up a few more sandwiches to-go for himself, Bob, and Hop. Will’s still back with Mom, for better or worse, and Jonathan doesn’t want to interrupt them.

Outside, Hop honks the horn a few times.

“Kali, you’re in charge till my mom comes back out,” he says, scarfing down half his sandwich in a single bite.

She flashes an agreeable smile to a chorus of dissent from Will’s friends. El glances around, confused at the sudden uproar.

Jonathan points at her while he’s struggling into his jacket and says, “Second-in-command.”

He scrambles out the door and down the driveway to jump into Hop’s truck right as he’s starting the engine. They’re mid-conversation when Jonathan climbs into the backseat.

“ — exactly what I said. Didn’t I say it? But I’m the jerk.”

“You’re not a jerk, Hop. But think about who these kids are, raised in a lab? Of course they’re gonna root for the underdog, and however badly he acted before, isn’t that sort of what we’re talking about here? A kid with the world against him?”

Jonathan smothers a dubious laugh. Billy hardly looked like he was running scared from anyone or anything when he first met him. Jonathan hadn’t been at that party five minutes before he overheard at least three different people talking about the new keg stand king. Not much of an underdog, just to look at him.

“Look, I’m not saying we don’t do something about the dad, but I can’t have _kids_ running around trying to kill each other on top of everything else.”

“Of course not,” Bob agrees, glancing back at Jonathan to let him know he’s included. “Who’s he trying to kill now, though?”

Hop mutters under his breath and takes a turn too hard. Jonathan chokes on the last bit of his sandwich, and that gets Hop muttering again, halfhearted apologies this time.

“I don’t want to make light of what we heard back there,” Bob continues. “Clearly it’s not okay, and we shouldn’t act like it is. But Will seems inclined to forgive what happened, and the fact that Billy set himself up to face the consequences of what he’s done, I mean that’s huge, Hop. He’s not trying to hide it. He knows it’s wrong, and he wants to fix it.”

Jonathan remembers what Will said to him in the car. He remembers the calm acceptance in Billy’s face when he came clean about what happened. He rubs a hand over the back of his neck.

“I don’t like it,” Hop says, shaking his head. “Maybe you’re right, but I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it either,” Jonathan adds, catching his eyes in the mirror. “But he’s making an effort.”

“Exactly,” Bob chimes in. “If he wants to make amends, I say we let him.”

“Make amends,” Hop echoes dubiously.

“Make amends, Hop. If he’s serious, it’ll out. If he’s not, that’ll out, too.”

Hop pulls into his driveway and kills the engine. He looks skeptically at Bob and Jonathan in turns.

“Why don’t you just talk to him, Hop?” Jonathan suggests, leaning forward in his seat to meet Hop’s eyes. “His dad grounded him, but he’ll be at school on Monday. You know what car he drives, and it’s like Bob says. If he’s for real, you’ll know.”

A speculative gleam comes into Hop’s eye. He hums and pockets his keys. “Not bad, kid.”

He climbs out of the truck and starts unpacking the supplies. Bob sighs lightly from the front seat but doesn’t say more before getting out and helping unload the truck.

Fixing up the windows in the cabin is a lot harder than fixing the window at home had been. There’s a lot of going up and down a ladder and sending up tools and materials to get the job done. Bob switches with Hop to put up the second string of window panes, and on the ground, Hop cracks open a beer.

“Hey, Jonathan,” Bob calls down. “Pass me that putty knife, would you? Thanks.”

Jonathan cranes his neck to see what Bob’s doing. He wants to be able to put the last window up himself.

“You want one of these, kid?” Hop gives his beer a shake.

“No, thanks, Hop.”

“Coffee?”

“I’ll take some coffee!” Bob says cheerfully, a few thick wood shavings fluttering down on either side of the ladder. “If you don’t mind!”

Hop gets the coffeemaker going and waves Jonathan over. “Thanks for your help today.”

“Sure, Hop. I like all this stuff.”

“Yeah? Good. Good thing to like.” He takes down some mugs. “You wanna try that last one?”

“Can I?”

“I’m fine with that. Go ahead and get Bob down here.”

Jonathan lets Bob know to come get his coffee after he finishes the window and sits at the table to wait for him. Hop stays standing and leans his hip against the counter, still nursing that first beer.

There’s dirt under Bob’s nails when he joins them. He looks different with dirty hands, just like he’d looked different outside Hawkins Lab. Jonathan’s not used to seeing him look any kind of way except soft and well-meaning. He didn’t think Bob had it in him to be tough. To literally get his hands dirty with the rest of them.

Bob catches Jonathan staring and huffs a laugh through his nose. “Messy job putting things back together, huh?” he muses, getting up to wash his hands.

“Well, you’re pretty handy,” Jonathan says, talking over the tap.

“Thanks, Jonathan!” He turns the faucet off and dries his hands. “You’re not so bad yourself. It’s fun working with my hands for a change, and it always feels good leaving something better than how you found it.”

Jonathan takes a long drink and waits for Bob to sit back down. “You haven’t said what happened at the lab. I guess I haven’t asked.”

“Hasn’t been time, has there?” Bob replies, smiling easily.

Hop sits across from him at the table. He’s watching him steadily, a knowing tone creeping into his voice to match the smile twitching under his mustache. “Tell him what happened, Bob.”

“Oh, it’s not much of a story.”

“You took on a building of those mangled dogs by yourself to unlock the doors for us. This guy,” Hop adds, pointing at Bob’s face. “We could see one of ‘em on the security feed closing in on him, so this guy set off the sprinkler system to get it to turn tail and go the other way. Now if that was me, I would’ve been dog food right there. Done.”

“Wait, so then you unlocked the gate for us?”

Bob grins, some color coming up in his cheeks. “Yeah, that was me. Well, we’re not all fighters, but you gotta play to your strengths, right?”

“That’s…” Jonathan trails off, tapping the handle on his mug. He can hear in his hesitation all the other times he’s dug his heels in against Bob’s efforts to break ground with him, and for the life of him, he can’t reconcile why he ever tried so hard to keep him out. “That’s, uh, really something.”

“Pretty damn heroic is what it is,” Hop boasts.

“It wasn’t all that. I just had to get everybody out, and that was the way to do it. It’s nothing you two wouldn’t have done.”

And that’s the truth, top to bottom.

Jonathan knows Mom and Hop would’ve done the same in a heartbeat to get everyone else to safety, but he didn’t necessarily know that about Bob. Now that he does, though, he sort of can’t fathom a time when he thought it would be any other way. It feels obvious, now. A certainty. The truth, top to bottom.

“I’ll drink to that,” Hop says, bringing Jonathan out of his head.

“Yeah, me, too.”

Bob laughs. “This is great. We gotta do this more often.”

“Let’s hope we don’t have to, though, huh, Bob?”

Jonathan tosses back the last of his coffee and scrapes the chair on the floor getting to his feet. “I’m gonna get that last window, Hop.”

“Sure, kid. I’ll spot you.”

It takes Jonathan twice as long as it took Bob and Hop, but he doesn’t drop or break anything, and when he’s done, his hands are just as dirty as Bob’s were.

“Guess that does it. Good work, guys.”

“Yeah, we make a good team,” Bob replies. “You and the girls oughta stay for dinner, Hop. Since you gotta drive us back and pick them up anyway.”

“Why don’t we wait and see if Joyce is up for it first,” Hop says, sounding like he doubts their prospects.

But Mom’s in a much better mood when they get back to the house. She still looks tired, but all the frantic nervous energy has gone out of her, and Will has calmed down a lot, too. Jonathan sits next to him on the couch and lets Mom, Hop, and Bob figure out what they’re gonna do for dinner.

 _Blazing Saddles_ is playing on the TV, and the kids are paying attention to it in varying degrees. Dustin and Lucas are on the floor pointing at the screen and muttering excitedly to each other — Jonathan picks out the words _contemporary_ , _satire_ , and _anachronistic_ before he stops listening. El and Kali are squeezed onto a single armchair, both watching the screen, rapt. Will’s sat on the middle of the couch with Mike where they’re sharing a big bowl of popcorn.

“That took forever,” Will says, lowering his voice so he’s not talking over the movie.

Jonathan shrugs. “There were a lot of windows. Hey, did you know Bob’s kind of a superhero?”

“Bob’s totally a superhero,” Mike corrects him through a mouthful of popcorn. He nods at Will. “You missed it.”

“I miss all the good stuff.”

“You’re not missing this,” Jonathan muses, reaching across Will to steal the bowl off Mike’s lap.

“Hey!”

Jonathan palms a handful of popcorn and passes it back to him. On the TV, Cleavon Little as Sheriff Bart talks the people of Rock Ridge through building a paper town with paper people to fool the bad guys. It’s pretty funny, but it gets Will frowning.

“Could you imagine if someone made a perfect replica of Hawkins, right down to the people?”

“Weird,” Dustin agrees, biting into a candy bar. He shivers. “Doppelgängers. Not cool.”

“What is that?” El asks without glancing away from the TV.

“Someone who looks just like you,” Kali answer smoothly, beating Dustin to the explanation. “But who _isn’t_ you.”

“…Wow.”

Lucas rolls his eyes and thumps Dustin’s arm. “Dude, really?”

That gets El’s attention. “Like a mirror? But alive?”

“Like an evil twin,” Mike clarifies. “Someone who tries to take over your life by stealing your identity.”

Jonathan notices Will’s eyes starting to dim and winds an arm around his shoulders. He relaxes after a second and swipes the bowl from Mike to set it on his lap.

“A fraud always reveals his hand, Jane,” Kali says, in response to El’s wide-eyed look. “A mirror can take your face, but that’s all it can take.”

“Yeah, like we’d know if you weren’t really you,” Lucas adds, smiling wryly. “See? ’Cuz we know you enough to tell the difference.”

“That’s a doppelgänger’s biggest weakness,” Dustin says with authority. He glances at the battle unfolding on the TV. “That, and being made of paper.”

“Well said, Dustin.”

“Thank you, Kali.”

They go off on a tangent then about doppelgängers in DnD, all of them chiming in excitedly to fill Kali and El in on their favorite pastime. All of them but Will who’s sunken down into his own world staring blankly at the TV. Jonathan nudges him to catch his attention.

“Hey, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Just thinking.”

“What about?”

Will shrugs and says, a little sourly, “Mom wants to talk to Billy.”

“So does Hop,” Jonathan tells him, and even manages to sound apologetic. “Hey, listen. You believe he’s the real deal, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he mumbles.

“Then let him prove it. Okay? Don’t worry so much.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Right about what?” Mike asks, grabbing popcorn from the bowl.

“Paper monsters,” Will answers quickly and lightly, gesturing at the screen. Turns out bad habits really do die hard, but Jonathan will give him this little white lie since it’s technically its own kind of truth. “Shadow people. They’re not so tough.”

Jonathan just hopes Will hears how right he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Raise your words, not your voice” is a quote from Rumi


	16. Wanna Do Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joyce really thought she was going to take one look at Billy Hargrove and give him hell, but that plan goes out the window after about two seconds. 
> 
> Bob and Hop really aren’t much help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) Steve and Billy being tremendously cute and couple-y from an outsider-POV  
> 2) Joyce & Bob & Hop _radiating_ triad vibes like whoa  
> 3) Mentions of Billy's self-destructive tendencies

Joyce digs a pack of Camels out of her shirt pocket and stares balefully at the high school. On either side of her, Hop and Bob wisely keep their comments about it to themselves.

They drove up twenty minutes ago to wait for the final bell, and Joyce has the cigarette butts ringing her feet to show for it. She has a whole string of issues to air out with Billy Hargrove, the least of them somehow being that he nearly killed her boy.

She has a hard time reconciling that muddied image of him with the timid boy who slept soundly on her couch the night El closed the gate. Even standing at Max’s shoulder like a sentinel in her kitchen, he’d looked harmless enough, and Will likes him — genuinely likes him and wants for them all to give him a chance to try.

The fact of his forgiveness, genuine and whole, is almost enough for her. Almost. She doesn’t understand her son’s heavy heart or his shining mind that can see and believe the best in anyone. Her boy. Her good, beautiful boy.

Kids stream out into the chilled daylight in time with the ringing bell. It looks just the same as when she was in school. She drops the burnt up cigarette butt and grinds it under her heel.

“Do you see him?” she asks, much too soon, reaching for the Camels again.

“Joyce, come on,” Bob says, waving his hand through the lingering smell of smoke. “You’re gonna go through the whole pack.”

“Then I’ll go through the whole pack,” she fires back, wheeling on Hop when he slips the carton out of her hand. “Hop!”

“There he is!” he shouts, pointing, and by the time she looks back at him, his hands are empty. He half smiles, damn him, and yelps, _“Ow!”_

She goes to thump his arm again. “How can you joke around at a time like this?”

“I’m not! Jesus, Joyce,” Hop mutters, rubbing the bruise she hopes she gave him. “Might wanna go ahead and give ’em back to her, Bob. She means business.”

Bob lets out a squeak at the dark look she gives him and fumbles the carton out of his jacket. She lights another cigarette, replaces the pack in her shirt pocket, and scans the throngs of students flooding out of the school.

The herd’s thinning out with every passing minute, but there’s still no sign of Billy. She taps out her cigarette, anxious, dreading the moment of confrontation but not for herself. She’s squared off against Billy Hargrove once already and found him skittish more than aggressive. That’s what she dreads now, more than if she thought he might lash out at them.

“Joyce?” Bob tries, peeking around her at Hop and having a silent conversation with him when she doesn’t respond.

She holds up her hand, finally spotting him ambling through the doors with Steve at his elbow. He’s gesturing emphatically with his hands and bumping Billy’s shoulder.

They step out of the school’s long hanging shadow in unison, and bathed in the early afternoon sunlight, Billy tosses his head back to laugh. His hands are buried in his jacket pockets, but he bumps Steve back a second later, shaking his head, both of them grinning.

“Look at that smile,” Joyce hears herself saying.

“Don’t lose your nerve, Joyce,” Hop murmurs, but she can hear the consideration in his voice.

“You’re right, Hop,” Bob concurs gravely. “He sure looks mean.”

He doesn’t look even a little bit mean, but Joyce has learned the hard way that innocence can be a mask. Lonnie taught her that lesson, and their boy, their good beautiful boy had learned it from him the same way Joyce had. Maybe Billy had to learn that lesson from his dad, too. There’s no way to guess, but Joyce means to find out. By God, she will.

Still laughing, still brushing Steve’s shoulder with his, Billy glances up and spots them by his car. He waves, smiling brilliantly for a second before it stutters on his face and he stops mid-stride. Steve keeps walking until the back of Billy’s hand makes contact with his chest before he stops, too.

Joyce watches Billy fist his hand in Steve’s shirt and step around in front of him, turning his back to the parking lot and hiding his face, but they can see Steve perfectly. He doesn’t make any effort to hide.

The look on his face is soft and sympathetic, not worried at all.

Joyce drops her cigarette and smears it into the ground with her heel. Hop glances at her, but she crosses her arms instead of going for another one.

“Bit like Nancy and Jonathan, aren’t they? Fire and water,” Bob remarks, not seeming to hear the implication of what he’s just said. He laughs once, amused, hearing something else and giving Joyce a charmed smile. “Hey! Like you and me!”

Hop laughs, strangling it into a cough. He tries to wrestle his face back into something serious, but his mustache keeps twitching. He says, “Bob, come on, we’re here to put the fear of God in this kid.”

“Maybe you are,” Bob concedes, and truthfully, he had raised his own concerns about _putting the fear of God_ into Billy Hargrove. He wants to talk to him and hear his side, but never once has he been on board for interrogating him in the way Hop initially proposed. “I’m here to keep the peace.”

“Hey, Hop! Mrs. Byers, Bob,” Steve calls out, walking in step with Billy again.

“Hey, Steve!” Bob calls back, waving kindly. “Hey, Billy.”

He nods, looking from him to Hop and Joyce in turns. His voice comes out even but quiet. “Hey, Bob. Ma’am. Chief. Everything okay?”

“Actually, kid, there’s something we gotta talk to you about. Involves you and this car and some kids on their bikes.”

Billy doesn’t look surprised. He nods again, turning a sober look on Steve, who nods back.

“I’ll go get Max,” he says easily, smiling. “Just find us later, okay?”

“Yeah, Steve. Thanks.”

Steve grips Billy’s arm as he’s turning to go and catches Joyce’s eye. He takes his hand off, cheeks coloring, and waves vaguely, calling out goodbyes over his shoulder and jogging across the parking lot to his car.

Billy watches him for a second, eyes soft, exactly the way Steve had looked at him. He shifts his attention back to them, holding his ground but looking nervous beneath it.

“I’m sorry,” he says, swallowing and starting to put his hands in his pockets, reconsidering, and balling them up at his sides instead. He starts again, haltingly. “Mrs. Byers… you’ve only ever been good to me. However you feel about me or what I did, I know I deserve it.”

Joyce looks at his stern expression and at the storm in his eyes. He’s a different person laughing, bigger. Now he looks broken down to a fragment, like a glass shard sufficient for cutting but not big enough to see himself in. A mask, but maybe not for hiding his face after all. Maybe for hiding something else.

“Why did you do it?” she asks him in a soft, searching voice.

He blinks, eyebrows lifting in surprise and changing the whole shape of his face. Color mists the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. He says, “What?”

“Someone could’ve gotten hurt. Not just my boy or his friends. You, or Max. Did you think about that?”

“No,” he admits in an undertone. There’s a hitch in his breathing, just a small one.

“Then why? Did you go out looking for someone to hurt?” she asks skeptically.

“No,” he says again, flinching this time and lowering his eyes. “I was just trying to scare her, and I took it too far.”

“Was there a reason for that?” Bob asks, tipping his head.

A tendon in Billy’s neck jumps, and he averts his eyes from the tender look Bob gives him. He shakes his head, eyes suddenly very far away.

“Billy,” Joyce soothes. “Tell us the truth, sweetie.”

“It doesn’t matter, Mrs. Byers,” he says, pleading, blue eyes wide in his desperation. All the ice melted and ringed in red.

“It matters to me.”

“You heard her, kid,” Hop murmurs, keeping his voice pitched low, too. He looks pointedly at Joyce and Bob, choosing his words carefully. “You can’t undo it, but what we’ve gotta sort now is whether we can trust you or not. If you can tell us where your head was at, that’s a good start.”

Bob’s eyes light up, but his answering nod is subdued and cautious, encouraging. “You’re gonna be around the kids, Billy. That’s just a fact. It’ll be a lot easier on us if we’re all on the same page. Think about Max. You wanna do right by her, don’t you?”

“I’m _trying_ to do right by her. I know I fucked it up before. I know I’ve _been_ fucking up — ”

“Okay, well, first of all, language,” Bob interjects, unmoved by the blandly disapproving look Hop gives him.

“I’ve never hurt Max,” Billy insists, oddly pale. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.”

“Well, if you weren’t looking to hurt someone else,” Bob echoes, frowning. “Were you trying to hurt yourself?”

Billy presses his lips together, trying to hide how the lower one wobbles. His eyes slam closed, and he doesn’t answer. The mask, the one that’s not for hiding his face but for hiding his pain, shatters.

It’s a look she’s seen often enough on Will to know it by sight alone. Will probably knew it on sight, too. Like calling to like. She doesn’t know what that says about Billy. She doesn’t know what it says about Will either.

“Kid, you know…” Hop begins, looking about as lost as Joyce felt when she saw Billy step out into the sunshine. “I meant what I said to you outside your house that day. Anything you can’t handle, you can come to us. I know you didn’t have that option when you got here — probably felt like you didn’t have anything when you got here — but you got us now. There’s no reason you gotta be that kid anymore. You hearin’ what I’m tellin’ you?”

Billy laughs, or he tries to. All Joyce can see in it is Will’s feathery smile when he’s falling apart but can’t stand to ask for help. She wants to hug him, wants to give him some kind of comfort that he’ll accept.

“What if I’m always that kid?”

“You think I’d be standing here talking to you if I thought that was the case? None of us would.”

“What Hop means to say,” Bob interrupts, holding his hand out in Hop’s direction to slow him down, “is that we couldn’t make sense of what happened, and the kids had different stories, so they weren’t much help either. You’re the only one who could tell us why you did it, and you’re the only one who can decide whether you grow up or not. And if you wanna throw it all away, Billy, that’s up to you, too.”

“I don’t,” he whispers, and the inside-oriented gaze of his eyes shifts, some part of him coming back or waking up. He looks at Joyce, right into her heart. “Not anymore.”

The last of her anger fizzles out. She doesn’t want to put the fear of God in this boy. Not anymore.

“Sweetie, can I give you a hug?”

Something alarmingly like terror flickers over his face. He fidgets with his hands in his pockets, looking everywhere but at her. He stammers, “You don’t have to — ”

“Just a heads up, kid?” Hop says, walking around toward his truck but stopping at Billy’s shoulder. “This one never does anything she doesn’t wanna do. Ain’t that right, Joyce?”

“Bite me, Hop.”

“Yeah, well, way to prove my point,” he muses, turning to Billy. “Look, Billy, you remember this, all right? _We’ve got you_. Applies to any and all situations. Yes, I mean that, and I don’t wanna have to have this conversation with you again. Are you gonna make me?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. I’ll see you and Max around. Joyce, Bob.”

“Thanks, Hop!” Bob holds his hand up in a wave, flashing a cheerful smile as Hop starts his truck.

Billy holds his hand up in a wave, too, though his expression’s more somber than Bob’s. Watching Hop drive away, he murmurs, “Surprised you don’t wanna kill me.”

“I thought about it,” she says, cracking a small smile when that gets him to thaw, just a bit.

“Only for a second,” Bob amends. “We talked her out of it. I must say, you got a real champion in Will. You’re gonna have to tell me your secret. Maybe I can get it to work on Jonathan.”

Billy snorts and looks down at his feet. “’S nothing to do with me.”

“Yeah, he’s got a big heart,” Bob says. “Guess we can always just chalk it up to that.”

Except Joyce knows now that Will feels protective over Billy because they hide their pain the same way.

She has no idea how he picked up on it and even less of a plan for how to approach the topic with him, but she knows she’ll have to somehow. However more honest he’s learned to be after the Upside Down, she doesn’t anticipate that conversation going well. Unless —

“Billy, could I ask you for a favor?”

“Yeah, what is it?” he asks, completely unassuming, part of the way back to being that fuller, less afraid version of himself.

“Would you come talk to Will sometime? I think it’d mean a lot to him.”

“About what?”

Joyce starts to explain, but her eyes catch on Bob. He understands before she can even open her mouth to ask him to give them a minute.

“I’ll go start the car. Billy, it was really nice talking to you. I’m glad we cleared all this up.”

“Uh…”

“Take your time, okay, Joyce?” He waves with the keys and walks off to the car with a bounce in his step, whistling as he goes.

“Kinda wish I knew _his_ secret,” Billy mutters.

She smiles, watching Bob go. “Believe me, so do I.”

Billy chews on his lip and crosses his arms over his chest. “So what’s with all the suspense?”

“Will would be so embarrassed if he heard me say this,” she tells him, watching his face. “But he really identifies with you, and I think I’m starting to understand why. He can’t stand talking about himself when he’s hurting either, and you don’t have to tell me anything, Billy. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but my boy sees something in you that he recognizes in himself, and I know him. He’ll never come right out and ask you. He won’t ask anyone. He’ll just… keep hiding behind that mask of his.”

The bristles come back, but in the way that makes him shrink rather than puff up. His eyes widen, and then his face goes carefully, perfectly blank. She points excitedly at his face, further astonishing him.

“That’s it! That’s the one!”

He pushes his pocketed hands out in front of him and sighs, looking away. He mutters, “Yeah, okay. I’ll talk to him.”

“Oh, Billy, thank you.”

He nods, still looking down and away from her.

“Are you gonna be okay, sweetie?”

“Yeah,” he says, glance skittering in her direction but only catching for a second. “But he might be waiting a while for that talk.”

“That’s okay.”

He nods again, still not meeting her eyes. She thinks she knows what’s bothering him.

“Billy, did you maybe want that hug after all?”

Color floods his face, but he doesn’t deny it and he doesn’t look up either. Joyce bites her lip, trying not to laugh, and holds her arms out.

Poor thing, he looks like he’s about to jump out of his skin, but he steps in close, hands buried still in his pockets. She hugs him through it, holding on for both of them and thinking the whole time that he’ll bolt the moment she lets go of him.

“For what it’s worth, I think you can change. You’ve come this far, haven’t you?”

Thickly, he says, “Guess you’re right.”

She pulls away to look at him, ignoring his red eyes, to catch his wrists in her hands, just for a second. “Come see us anytime, Billy. I mean it.”

This time he does hold her steady gaze. “Okay.”

“Okay, good.” She lets go of him and takes a step toward where Bob’s waiting for her. “Be safe, sweetie.”

He nods, dazed, and gets in his car. She crosses to hers and climbs in on the passenger’s side. They watch Billy drive off in calm, warm silence.

“Everything okay?” Bob asks.

“I think we’re making progress. Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he says, and adds, neutrally, “as much as he’ll let you.”

“That’s what I mean, Bob.” She liberates her smokes from her pocket, shakes one out, and cranks her window down. “It’s like chipping away at a block of marble with this kid.”

“I know, Joyce. I know.”

“You’d think he was guarding state secrets,” she mutters around a cigarette. She strikes the lighter a few times, gets the cherry going, and waves her hand through the ensuing smoke. “Him and Will, I don’t understand. What is it with kids thinking nobody else could possibly understand what they’re going through?”

“Did you think anyone could understand you when you were his age?” he asks, easily, buoyantly. “Much less adults? Come on, Joyce.”

“It’s still frustrating.”

“No arguments there,” he muses, reaching across the center console to hold her hand. “But dialogue’s a great place to start.”

She sighs and squeezes his hand in hers, dropping her head back against the seat to look at him. Just to look at him in profile lit up in the soft afternoon light with the Carpenters playing softly on the radio.

 _Bob Newby_ , she thinks. _Superhero_.

He catches her staring and smiles, cheeks flushing red. “What? What’d I say?”

“Everything,” she tells him, lifting his hand to kiss his knuckles.

“Aww, man,” he says, beaming and chuckling under his breath. “I wish sixteen-year-old me knew how much better it was gonna get. _Joyce Byers_. _”_

“Oh,” she laughs, rolling her eyes fondly.

She doesn’t take her hand away from his. Joyce at sixteen didn’t know how much better it was gonna get either, after all.


	17. Secret Agents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course Lucas likes Max. Of course he wants to hang out with her the very next time that he can. The problem comes from not having a way to coordinate with her, but hey, he's a practical guy. He can figure it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) Nefarious dinner requests  
> 2) Erica Sinclair's limitless wit and sass  
> 3) Girls who play vidja games

Max doesn’t have a radio yet, so the best way Lucas has to reach her if he doesn’t just run into her accidentally is to go to her house. He knows he’s not supposed to, or if he does, he has to be careful not to be seen by Billy’s dad. Apparently he’s an even bigger asshole than Lucas thought, but at least Billy’s okay. He mostly seems like he means well anyway, except that he can be kind of unpredictable.

That doesn’t make it easy to trust him, but Lucas trusts Max, and she trusts Billy. Even if Lucas can never tell what’s going on in Billy's head, it’s obvious he cares about maintaining that trust.

He bikes over to their house the Saturday after Thanksgiving, hoping that’s long enough after the holiday that she’ll be able to hang out. The last time he swung by to steal Max away, he’d used the front door and had been yanked inside with an urgent glance up and down both sides of the road. Then, he’d been confused at the secrecy. If he’s honest, he still finds the whole thing really confusing. Hawkins is a small town, but he’s felt the side eyes and the assumptions and the unfairness before. He sort of doubts it’d be too much coming from Billy’s dad. If it did get bad, he’d have to answer for it. Maybe not to Lucas but definitely to his dad.

Well, he kind of appreciates the cover anyway. Even if he sort of thinks they’re overreacting.

Like that day they went to the junkyard. That was _so_ dramatic.

 _You can’t just show up here, Lucas,_ Max had hissed at him, eyes gone big like she was actually, genuinely scared and not just putting on a show.

Billy had chosen that moment to look up from his weights mid-curl. The barbel in his hands probably far surpassed what Lucas clocks in soaking wet, but it hadn’t looked like Billy was struggling all that much. Once he spotted Lucas, though, he nearly dropped them.

He recovered in time to keep from clobbering himself to death and returned the bar to its stand. His voice came out low and rushed, sounding like Max’s when he said, _I’ll watch the street. Be quick, Max. God._

In the end, she’d called Billy in from the driveway and asked Lucas to tell him everything he told her, and Billy had been too twitchy to sit still for any of it. He’d slowed down a little when Lucas got to the part about Steve fighting the demogorgon, but even then, he’d been distracted, eyeing the door and biting his nails.

Max had gotten the idea for them to leave the house and just hop in the car and drive, so they wouldn’t be sitting ducks, and that was a bizarre way to talk about home, but it looked like the suggestion calmed Billy down some. Enough that he agreed to hop in the shower and take them for a spin in his car, and that was even weirder somehow, being inside that monster car with the windows rolled down and the radio grumbling music, Billy looking less and less hunted the farther they got from the house.

That’s why he was at the junkyard that night. He hadn’t believed half of what Lucas told him, but he’d been determined to stick around for Max and to get her home on time.

Not really batting a thousand there, but that’s okay. Lucas is more inclined to believe staying with Max was the more important part anyway.

He bikes to their house the long way so he can see around to the backyard. Both the Camaro and a truck are parked behind the house. He reacts accordingly and leaves his bike at the neighbor’s and goes the rest of the way on foot, careful to avoid the windows so he won’t be seen.

It’s easy enough picking his way to Max’s window since he’s seen her room and knows which side of the house it’s on, but when he peeks inside, she’s not there. Undeterred, he sneaks over to the next window and very carefully goes to look through it. This one’s got blinds so he can’t see in like he could with Max’s room, but after a moment, he hears her voice.

“ — and obviously I’m not gonna tell him anything, Billy, but he’s never asked me to spy on you before. It made me feel really weird. Will you just be careful? Like, even more than you usually are after… y’know. I don’t know what he thinks he knows, but it can’t be good.”

“Did he say anything about — ”

There’s a knock on the door, and Lucas hits the ground, listening. He couldn’t have been spotted anyway through the blinds, but he knows how paranoid Max and Billy are about anyone seeing him here, so he’s not taking any chances. The door snicks open, and a thick silence follows. Eventually, a man’s voice shatters it. At the sound of that voice, Lucas is glad he thought to hide after all.

“What’s going on in here?”

“Math,” Max says, punctuating the answer with a noisy flutter of pages. “I have a test on Monday because my teacher has a sick sense of humor,” she explains, which is patently untrue on both counts, “and Billy said he’d help me go over it.”

“And you’re getting the help you need?” he asks dubiously.

“Oh, yeah,” she tells him, managing to sound enthusiastic and bashful in the same beat, like she doesn’t hear how flat his question was. “I mostly understand it. Word problems in math just trip me up, but Billy’s really good at figuring out what they’re really asking.”

“That true, Billy? Well, go on. Let’s hear it.”

“It’s just algebra,” he starts, but even Lucas can hear how heavy the answering silence feels. He sighs and starts reading in a wooden voice. _“Jenna was making twelve bucks an hour, and she got a ten percent pay increase. How much will she make after the raise?”_ With the question out of the way, his voice goes back to normal, but it’s still more subdued than usual. _“_ Kay, we want to find ten percent of twelve, right? It’s ten, so you can just move the decimal point over. One tenth on this side and a buck twenty over here gets thirteen-twenty an hour after we add it all up. See how I got that?”

That’s weird. Not that Billy understands percentages — well, maybe a little that Billy understands percentages — but that they’re pretending to study when Lucas very clearly heard them not studying. _It’s weird._

He hears Max say, “This side of the equation is the only one that changes? The other side’s always some percentage out of a hundred?”

“Whichever part you’re missing,” Billy mumbles. “You just solve for X.”

There’s another protracted silence, and then Billy’s dad is saying, “Your mother’s making Sloppy Joe’s for dinner. She asked what sides you want.”

Max lists a few options. When there’s no immediate response from Billy or his dad, she adds, as if oblivious to the tension, “Ooh, or what about macaroni salad? We can run to the store if we don’t have all the stuff to make it. Right, Billy?”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, Max,” the dad says before Billy can answer either way. “Macaroni salad, that’s what you want?”

“Mmhmm! Thanks, Mr. Hargrove.”

“Neil’s fine, Max. Billy,” he adds, his tone getting just a touch cooler, “keep the door open.”

Footsteps retreat, and then Max is whispering, “Holy shit, that was awesome!”

 _“It’s just algebra,”_ Billy insists.

“We could totally be like secret agents!”

Lucas taps on the window, not wanting to eavesdrop anymore if he can help it. Someone shuffles toward the window and pulls the blinds.

More disappointed than anything, Billy mutters, “Sinclair, what the hell are you doing here?”

Lucas stands, looking around one more time to make sure the coast is clear. “Sorry to just show up.” To Max, he says, “I couldn’t think of another way to get in touch with you.”

She looks at Billy with her eyebrows raised, and his eyes fall shut. He pinches the bridge of his nose.

“God, I’ll get you a radio, okay? What’s the deal, Sinclair? You want her to meet you somewhere? ‘Cuz you can’t stay here.”

“I think the arcade’s open. What do you say, Max?”

“Sure. Billy, do you mind giving us a ride?”

“Oh, that’s okay. I have my bike.”

“Well, head home and drop it off then. We’ll pick you up, won’t we, Billy?”

Lucas thinks Max is amazing purely on principle, but it’s awe-inspiring to see her talk her way into literally anything she wants. Billy glances over his shoulder at her and nods. He doesn’t have a look about him like he’s in the mood to say no to her about anything.

“Fine,” he mumbles. “I got a thing in town anyway. Just get going already. My dad’s gonna see you.”

“I’m going, I’m going. Thanks, Billy! I’ll see you soon, Max!”

Lucas takes off for his bike and doesn’t bother heading back inside once he gets home. He just dumps his bike on the lawn and sits on the curb to wait. He’s there not five minutes before he hears a window open behind him on the second floor. He knows it’s Erica before she even opens her mouth.

“That was fast. Nobody wants to hang out with you?”

“I’m waiting for a ride!” he yells, turning sideways to meet her suspicious glare. He sees more than hears her scoff.

“Dustin’s having Steve drive you around still?”

“Not Steve!” he calls back up, crossing his arms over his chest. At first he thought it was kind of weird how suddenly Dustin and Steve hit it off, but he has to admit Steve’s super easy to get along with.

“Jonathan?” she guesses.

“Max! Her and Billy!”

Erica goes quiet, probably narrowing her eyes at him, though he can’t tell from this distance. She knows by now, not because he told her but because she listens to everything all the time, that Max is new to the party and that Lucas maybe has a bit of a crush on her. He expects her to tease him about it or to express disbelief that he has friends outside of Dustin, Will, and Mike.

Instead of choosing between those two options, she does the Erica thing and picks both.

“Why would she want to hang out with you? Didn’t you say she was cool?”

Lucas’ first instinct is to prickle up because that’s always what Erica’s going for when she ribs him like this, but he also wants to laugh, too. Max is definitely too cool for all of them. He considers himself pretty lucky she wants to hang out with him anyway. Erica would probably really like her, too, but she’s never curious about any of his friends. Not in any way except this one where she’s giving him hell for it.

Sisters.

“She is cool!” he insists. “And she’s my friend.”

“Oh, so she doesn’t care that you’re a nerd?” Erica pops back, dropping her cheek into her hand to watch him with a massively unimpressed look on her face. She takes way too much joy out of these sparring matches. With that attitude, she’ll probably wind up a CEO or a high-powered lawyer someday.

“Do Abby and Moira care that you’re a nerd?” he counters, getting up to his feet and planting his hands on his hips.

“Whatever!” she shrieks, indignant. “I’m not a nerd!”

“Your report cards and your shelf of collectibles disagree!”

“At least I don’t hoard Dad’s army stuff like some kind of weirdo!”

Lucas pats himself down. He doesn’t remember donning anything of Dad’s before he left the house, but Erica always knows just which button to press to get him sweating. “What army stuff?” he calls back up.

She holds Dad’s binoculars up to her face, beaming. “ _All_ of his army stuff!”

“You know I use those for birdwatching, and he’s fine with it!” he argues, pointing at her for emphasis. “You can’t prove anything!”

Erica laughs, still peering down through the binoculars. “You’re so paranoid.”

“I’m not paranoid if you’re actually threatening me!”

“Lucas?”

He spins around and sees Max looking at him from the passenger’s seat of Billy’s car with a look on her face like she’s trying really hard not to laugh. Lucas turns back around to glare up at Erica, but she just sticks her tongue out at him before disappearing from the window.

“Tough crowd, Sinclair,” Billy muses, chuckling and angling his head for Lucas to go around.

Lucas climbs in behind Max’s seat and scoots over to the middle so he can see her. The last time he was in Billy’s car, was before and after the showdown with the dogs. It’d been a long night looking out at the world from the backseat, but this time doesn’t feel fraught like the others. There had been something hanging over their heads before — over Billy’s head — and that had made everything feel leaden with some kind of pressure that wouldn’t be eased. It’s gone now, whatever it was. Lucas sort of has an idea, but it’s only an idea. The more he thinks about it and the more certain he is that he’s right, the less any of it feels like it’s his business.

“Thanks for coming to get me, Billy,” Lucas says, leaning forward in his seat so their eyes can meet in the mirror — because he gets it. Maybe not all of it, but it feels worth acknowledging all the same. “I take back what I said about you being scary.”

“Make me earn it, Sinclair, Jesus. I haven’t even apologized yet.”

“Oh, right,” Lucas breathes, starting to smile. “Forgot you were going down the list. Mike’s gonna be so mad you saved him for last.”

“He’s saving Nancy for last,” Max corrects him, and yeah, that makes way more sense. “Actually, I think he was planning on saving Mrs. Byers for last, but she jumped the line.” She turns from Lucas to Billy who doesn’t look away from the road. “Steve said it really freaked you out when she showed up with Bob and Hop to talk to you at school.”

Billy sighs, saying, “I hate that he tells you everything.”

“No, you don’t,” she counters cheerfully. “Anyway, go on.”

“What?”

“You were about to apologize,” Max reminds him. “We’re waiting.”

Billy hesitates for a second before glancing out the window and hanging his arm over the edge. He clicks his tongue and pulls over right there on the shoulder. “Be just my luck to wreck my car over this. Okay,” he mutters, turning the engine off and twisting around in his seat to look straight at Lucas. He starts out awkwardly, but he gains momentum as he goes. “I’m sorry. I was a dick. You coulda been hurt, all of you,” he adds, glancing at Max, “and I don’t have an excuse for it. All I got is a promise that it won’t happen again.

“I don’t know if this makes it right or if swearin’ to do better’ll be a start at fixing it, but you’re hangin’ out with Max now, and that means you’re gonna be seeing me. So whatever it takes, Sinclair, you just say the word. It’s your call.”

Lucas —

Well, he’d heard from everyone else what this was going to feel like, but he sort of thought —

He’s just surprised, is all.

Because Billy’s whole face is in on the apology. Serious and focused, but braced for a blow, too. Like he’d really be okay with it if Lucas didn’t want to accept his apology, and that’s —

“You gonna say somethin’ about it today, Sinclair?” Billy asks in a wry murmur. He jolts when Max swats his arm with just the backs of her knuckles. He covers the spot with his hand with a distracted frown, all eyes on Lucas again. “What do you think, kid?”

“I think…”

What does he think? Mostly he thinks it’s not hard at all to look at Billy now and see the guy Max keeps telling everybody he is. It puts what he’s heard from Will and Dustin into perspective, too. Mike’s gonna need more convincing, but for Lucas’ part, he only cares about whether Billy’s for real or not, and clearly he is.

If he wants to get technical here, it’s not really about what he thinks. It’s more about what he feels, and what he feels is —

Respected.

“I think I’m good with the apology. It was a pretty good one.”

“Yeah?” Billy asks, cracking just an edge of a smile.

“Lucas, come on! He said whatever it takes!” Max protests. “You could make him hop on one leg and sing The Star-Spangled Banner if you wanted!”

“Oh, my God, Max,” Billy groans, but not like he’s really annoyed. He doesn’t even try to shake off her hand when she sets it where his was before it fell away, gentle this time where she’d forgotten to be before.

“Or your favorite monologue from Hamlet,” Max adds, devious, giving Lucas a bright, conspiratorial look. God, she’s cool. “Billy has a favorite monologue from Hamlet.”

“It’s not _my favorite_. It just sounds cooler than all the other ones.”

“Yeah, your favorite, Billy,” she persists. “That’s what that means.”

“Why are you like this?” Billy mutters.

“Which one?” Lucas asks, leaning forward in his seat again. _“To be or not to be?”_

“See?” Billy says, gesturing at Lucas with a look on his face like this isn’t the first time Max has given him shit about his reading list. “It’s not just me.”

“He’s right. It’s arguably the best in the whole play.”

“Arguably?” Max asks, taking her hand back so Billy can face the front while she stays twisted around to look at Lucas. The look on her face is comically disdainful. “People sit around debating monologues and what order to rank them in?”

“Sort of? Academia’s pretty weird.”

“Apparently.” She flops back around to face the front when Billy starts the car, dropping her head back against the seat to look at him. “When does your thing start?”

Billy shrugs without checking the time. “Not for another twenty minutes.”

“What is it? Anything exciting?” Lucas asks.

He half-expects Max to answer in Billy’s place, but a beat of silence fills the car. It stretches for a few seconds more, contemplative, before Billy answers.

“Just a class at the community center. Sign language, or whatever.”

“Whoa, cool! Doesn’t someone from the high school teach it?”

“Yeah, the French teacher,” he says, nodding sagely. “She’s tough, but I like her.”

“I hate that we don’t get foreign languages in our level,” Max says, looking at Lucas for support. “That’s so dumb. I’m gonna lose all the Spanish I picked up in California.”

“You can speak Spanish?” Lucas asks, surprised. He’d figured California was bigger and way more diverse than probably any one part of Indiana, but he doesn’t actually know anyone who’s bilingual apart from the high school faculty.

“Not so much, but I mostly understand it? _Billy_ tested into Spanish IV.”

“Yeah, and my grammar’s for shit,” Billy mumbles, turning red. “Don’t know how I even passed that stupid test.”

“Your big brain doesn’t get complimented enough,” Max tells him mournfully, but teasingly, too. In a way like she’s not kidding so much as she is trying to get away with being nice by making a joke out of it. “You were around it more than I was, though. My friends only kind of spoke it a little bit, and even then, never really to me.”

“I guess you probably had a lot of friends out there, huh?” Lucas leans forward in his seat again to catch her eyes. “That sucks.”

“Yeah, but… I don’t think I’ve ever really had a best friend. Just a lot of pretty good ones. Does that make sense?”

“I know what you mean. Mike and Will are like this, you know,” he says, crossing two of his fingers. “We’re all in the party, but they’ve been on their own level for as long as I can remember.”

“The party?” Billy repeats, glancing at him in the mirror. “What is that?”

“Oh, it’s like, the four of us are a party. I guess we started calling ourselves that because of DnD, but then it just stuck.” He catches Max’s eye and stammers, “I mean, you know, because we played it a lot as kids. Growing up.”

Max nods in that exaggerated way like she’s humoring him, and it pops the bubble of his nerves. He huffs a laugh, and she does, too.

“What about you, Billy?” he asks, feeling lighter from Max’s smile. “Did you have a lot of friends, too?”

“No,” Billy says, but Max is already talking over him.

“Billy was the most popular kid at his school. Even the seniors loved him,” Max adds, rolling her eyes. “If we’d stayed for his last year, he would’ve been varsity football for sure. His coach already wanted to make him captain his junior year.”

“Whoa, really? You played football? Well, I guess that’s not surprising. That’s too bad we don’t have it here.”

“Basketball’s fine,” Billy mumbles.

“Doesn’t Steve play? I bet you really give him a run for his money on the court,” Lucas says.

“Sure, in practice,” Billy answers evenly, pulling into the parking lot at the arcade. “Sorta counterintuitive to dick around when it’s for real.” He slides his gaze over to Max while she’s unbuckling her seatbelt and tells her, “You got an hour and a half. I’ll be back to get you.”

“Okay. Thanks, Billy!”

“Thanks, Billy!” Lucas echoes.

He gets out of the backseat and stands at Max’s shoulder. They watch Billy drive away for a beat before Max turns to him.

“I bet you still can’t beat my high score!” she says, darting through the door to the arcade.

He’s not stupid enough to bet against her, especially knowing that she’s the reigning Dig Dug champion, but he’s always up for friendly competition and trash talk.

Lucas honestly tries his hardest, but he doesn’t beat her high score. Max shouts her victory loud enough that several people look over, and among them, Lucas spots a familiar face — two familiar faces. Will waves from his post by a pinball machine Barb’s honed in on.

“Hey, Lucas!” he calls out. “Hey, Max!”

“Hey!” Lucas calls back, running over to slap a hug on him. It feels good seeing him outside the house and looking all the way back to his old self. “Hi, Barb.”

“Hi, Lucas. Hi, Max.”

“Hi, Barb,” she replies, bouncing on her heels and beaming all the way up at Barb when she looks up from the machine. Max glances at the counter to see Barb’s score and laughs. “Whoa! You’re kicking this game’s ass!”

Lucas checks the score, too. “Holy shit.”

“I haven’t played in years,” Barb says, sounding embarrassed but pleased. She catches the pinball with one of the flippers before expertly launching it into the bumpers. “It’s nice to see I’ve still got it.”

 _“So cool,”_ Max says, gravitating over to Barb’s other side to watch. Side by side like that, with their hair catching in the sporadic light, they could almost be sisters.

“I guess this is why I couldn’t get you on the radio,” Lucas teases, bumping Will’s shoulder with his.

For a moment he looks ashamed. Then he murmurs, “Sorry. I didn’t have it on me.”

“No, that’s okay. I couldn’t get Mike or Dustin either. It’s their loss, though.”

“Is it?” Will asks, a little doubtfully. “Mike’s with El. Dustin’s probably with Steve.”

“Yeah, but they’re missing out on this,” Lucas insists, gesturing at Max and Barb laughing over the flashing colors on the machine, the point counter ticking higher and higher. “I’m kinda not even mad we just became third wheels.”

“We can’t be third wheels if there’s two of us and two of them,” Will corrects him smoothly. “That’s a full set.”

Lucas cracks a smile. He’d been hoping Will would say something to that effect. He loops an arm around his neck. “Wanna go play Galaga?”

Will smiles, too. “Sure.”

They wander off in the direction of the other machines and pop in a few quarters. The electronic beeps and trills of the game starting up pairs really nicely with Max and Barb’s carrying laughter. It feels nostalgic somehow, even though Lucas has never quite lived this memory before. Will shouts and fumbles the bright red joystick.

“Shoot.”

“My turn!”

Will gives him a bland frown but steps aside for Lucas to deposit his quarters. The title screen switches over to the level, and he starts shooting straight away.

“So Billy apologized to me,” he says offhandedly, spamming the button.

“Really?” Will asks, not bothering to hide his smile because he’s got his face turned to the screen. “How’d it go?”

Far be it from Lucas to really explain how it went or what it made him feel. He shrugs with one shoulder, mumbling, “Like you said it would, I guess.”

Will grins and bounces on his heels. He’s always been quick to smile, but they’ve felt a lot more genuine since he kicked the Mind Flayer to the curb. Lucas is glad for that. Maybe he can’t claim to be Will’s best friend, but Will is his. In the same way that he’d consider Dustin or Mike his best friends — because they are. It’s been them against the world a few times now, and Lucas wouldn’t trade them for anyone.

“It’s really good to have you back, Will.”

“Oh,” he says, and his smile goes wider as he ducks his head. “Thanks, Lucas. I really missed you guys, and I’m… it feels good to be back, too,” he adds, struggling for the words but finding them.

Lucas watches him a second too long, smiling back, and his sprite on the screen makes a warbling sound.

“Ooh! My turn!” Max crows, inserting herself in front of the joystick.

Barb comes up behind her, laughing at Max. She’s not quite as good at Galaga as she is as Dig Dug, but Barb is. She claims to have only ever played Galaxian before, which Lucas is pretty sure is a rotten lie based on her high score, but he’ll allow it. Just this once.

“Do you guys need a ride?” Barb asks while they’re walking outside in a group.

“Billy’s gonna come get us,” Max says, looking up a second later to meet Billy’s gaze when they get through the door. “Oh, look at that. Hey, Billy.”

“Hey, Billy!” Will calls out, lifting his hand in a wave.

A tiny, nearly imperceptible smile flickers over Billy’s face. Fondly, he says, “What’s up, little man?”

Lucas hangs back with Max to say bye to Barb while Will crosses to talk to Billy. He forgives Billy and all, but he’s not quite on Will’s level yet. He doesn’t fault him for it or anything. Just, for now, Barb’s a little more his speed.

“What are you gonna do after this, Barb?” Max asks, not curious or concerned in the slightest about the apparent conversation Billy’s having with Will at his car.

“Drop Will off, maybe stop by for a minute to see Joyce if she’s home. Later I’m meeting a friend from school for lunch.”

“Nancy?” Lucas asks, burying his hands in his pockets. It’s not cold out yet, but there’s a definite chill in the air. Hopefully this winter will have lots of snow.

“Oh, no,” Barb says, and trails off, a bit of color hitting her cheeks. Maybe the bite in the air’s getting to her, too. “No, um, she’s more of a friend of a friend. We don’t even have classes together, actually, but Steve sort of…” She laughs, the red flush deepening. “Uh, he introduced us.”

“Mysterious,” Max notes, about as serious as a heart attack. “Okay, you convinced me. I’m a fan.”

“Max, are you ready to go?” Billy asks, walking up on them with Will at his side.

“Yep. Are you ready to go, Lucas?” At his nod, she turns back to Barb and says, “Have fun meeting your friend.”

“Wheeler?” Billy asks, too, more than a little apprehensively, and that’s to be expected when he has yet to face her.

Barb’s face is sympathetic. She shakes her head, telling him, “No, Lindy. Um, from the cheerleading team?”

“Louder? Ah, hell. Good luck.”

“She’s not so bad,” Barb muses, smiling a little wider. “Everybody needs that one friend who’s kind of mean.”

“Not Billy. He’s the mean friend,” Max says, and then undermines what she’s just said by grabbing Billy’s wrist and towing him back in the direction of his car. “Bye, Barb! Bye, Zombie Boy!”

Barb and Will wave before heading off into the direction her car. Lucas climbs into the backseat again.

“How was your class?” Max asks Billy once he’s behind the wheel but before he’s started the car.

“Good,” he says, holding his hand to his chin and pulling away from it. “How was the — ” He turns his hands over like a cup spilling and then knocks his knuckles together. “How was — fuck, arcade? Games? Games.” He knocks his knuckles together again and turns his hands like he’s spilling the cup. “How were your games?”

Max sputters a laugh. “How were my games?”

“Yeah, Max,” Billy insists, all bluster. In spite of his reddening face, he scoops his hand up like he’s catching a bug and asks — in such a serious voice that Lucas can’t help laughing either — “Did you win?”

“Yes, I won. Please always go to your class before you pick me up. This is very fun for me.”

Billy sighs, put out. “Said it, didn’t you? Can’t get good at a thing if you don’t practice.” He mimes wiping his forehead. “Use it or lose it.”

“That’s true,” Lucas says, pointing at Billy for emphasis, though it’s really not necessary since Max is already staring at him. “Repetition helps things stick. If you worked at it together, you’d probably retain it a lot better, Billy. And Max, I bet you’d learn some of it, too.”

“Huh,” she says, trading Billy for Lucas and narrowing her eyes at him. “That could be fun.” Back to looking meaningfully at Billy, she adds, “Like a secret code.”

“Try a whole language,” Billy corrects her, swinging them back in the direction of Lucas’ house. “Works underwater, in a library, through a window, at a distance…”

Max sits up a little, mind working and eyes sparking at all that potential.

“Also,” Lucas adds, tentatively. “Deaf people really appreciate being able to communicate without having to write everything down to be understood.”

That look in Max’s eyes softens. She looks at Billy, but he keeps his eyes firmly on the road.

“I’m taking you straight home, right, Sinclair?” Billy asks, clearing his throat.

“Yeah, Billy. Thanks for driving us.”

“Sure.”

“Can we go look at radios soon?” Max asks, slouching in her seat so she can pull her knees in close. “So this doesn’t happen again?”

“Fine, yeah. We’ll drive around. If anywhere’s open, I’ll take you.”

“Merry Christmas to me,” Max says, preening. “Hey, so how does it even work on the radios? What do I do when I get it?”

Lucas leans forward in his seat to walk her through the basics. He wishes he knew off the top of his head where to point them to go shopping for one, but store hours after a holiday are always weird. It’s too bad, but she’ll have a radio soon. He hopes so at least. She’s in the party now. It’s only right she has a lifeline to them if she needs it.

They get to Lucas’ house before he knows it. Max slinks out of the front seat and hugs him on the sidewalk before he can turn to cross the lawn.

Her hair smells like strawberries.

“I’ll see you at school on Monday,” she says, stepping back and turning on her heel to get back in the car with Billy.

“Uh… oh, bye, Max! Bye, Billy.”

He holds up his hand in a wave and takes them down the street in the direction of home or wherever they can justify going instead. Lucas takes his time collecting his bike off the grass, considering the front door trapping the heat inside and the big open streets that have since gone slick with rain. He walks his bike out to the road and hops on, liking the feel of the breeze on his face.

The house can wait a while. He’s warm enough.


	18. Golden Eagle to Goldfinch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nancy does not take the news about Billy being a homicidal maniac on Halloween very well. Mike has a great time, all told.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) ANOTHER royal rumble. Fortunately for Billy, nobody jumps off a ladder or gets hit with a chair or explodes through a table.  
> 2) Depictions of pretty minor wounds.  
> 3) Spite lol

It’s a Sunday morning when Billy Hargrove knocks on his door and asks if Nancy’s home. Mike mostly knows the score by now, so he’s not surprised. That doesn’t mean he’s in much of a mood to be cooperative either.

“Why?”

The weird placid look on Billy’s face doesn’t change. “Got something to say to you, and she should hear it.”

Mike scowls at him. “Wait here.”

“Where would I go,” Billy mutters, as Mike’s shutting the door in his face.

“Who was that, Mike?” Mom asks from the kitchen without coming out to look.

“Just somebody from school here to see Nancy! I got it!” he tells her, already halfway up the stairs.

He knocks briskly on Nancy’s door. She calls for him to come in, and he opens the door to see her with Holly, both of them sitting on her bed and twisting weird hairdos on the heads of Nancy’s old dolls. Mike leans against the doorjamb, and Nancy looks up at him. She plucks the pick-end of the comb from between her teeth.

“What’s up?”

“Billy Hargrove’s here.”

She puts the comb down, confused but little else. “Did he say what he wants?”

“Yeah, he wants to apologize for almost killing me on Halloween.”

Nancy stares at him. Something like wrath flashes in her eyes, and it’s not all that often Mike gets to see it and _not_ be the cause, so he’s sort of stunned that that’s her first reaction. She gives Holly the doll in her lap and calmly stands.

“What are you talking about?”

“On Halloween,” he tells her, shrugging. “He ran us off the road. Me, Will, Lucas, and Dustin. He’s been going around apologizing to everyone, and I guess he finally got to the end of his list.”

“He’s downstairs?”

“I left him outside,” Mike muses, stepping out of the way when Nancy breezes past him. He follows her down the stairs and out the door, ignoring it when Mom calls out after them.

Billy’s standing in the yard near the mailbox looking out at the street. He turns when he hears the door open and looks nothing but resigned when Nancy makes a beeline for him and punches him in the face. She hits him with the right and pulls back to follow with the left, leaning into it so hard that she stumbles when Billy does.

“You tried to kill my brother! You tried to kill _Jonathan’s brother!_ Do you have _any idea_ what that family’s _been through?_ ” she yells, cracking him again right in the chin.

_“Nancy Diane Wheeler!”_

“Aww, Mom! Come on!”

Mom gives Mike a look that shuts him right up. She turns it to Nancy and even Billy. “I don’t want to hear another word. Inside. _Now_.”

Mike shuffles in just behind Nancy. There’s blood on her knuckles, and she’s holding her wrist in her hand. She goes to sit on the couch, scooting over to make room when Mike sits next to her. Billy ducks his head when he walks into the house a few steps ahead of Mom. She tuts at his face and gestures for him to go into the kitchen. She gives Nancy and Mike matching stern looks before following him.

“Is your wrist all right?” Mike asks once they’re clear.

Nancy blinks and looks at him. “What? Oh. Guess I’m not used to punching people.”

“Coulda fooled me. That was awesome!”

She sighs and flexes her fingers, hissing softly at whatever part that hurts. It all kind of looks like it hurts. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why? He’s a jerk.”

“You said he was here to apologize,” she mumbles, trying to shake out her hand but giving it up pretty quick with a wince. “I didn’t even let him talk.”

“Well, neither did he, when he was trying to kill four birds with one car.”

“On Halloween?” She asks, grimacing, but not so much at the question, it doesn’t look like. “You said he did it on Halloween?”

“Yeah. After school. You’re not sorry you punched him, are you? Because _Jonathan_ punched him when he found out.”

“Jonathan knew?” A wrinkle forms between her eyebrows. “Did Steve?”

“Yeah, obviously. Dustin told him when the thing with the dogs happened, so Steve made him say he was sorry. That’s the only reason he’s doing it, Nancy.”

She looks Mike in the eye for longer than he knows what to do with. Before either of them can come up with something more to say, Mom comes out of the kitchen. Her eyes catch on Nancy’s hand curled up in her lap, and her hard expression melts.

“Baby, let me see.”

Nancy relaxes the tight manacle she’d made around her wrist. It definitely looks swollen, and few of her knuckles are bruised from smashing up Billy’s face. She stands from the couch when Mom touches her arm to walk her into the kitchen. Mike trots in behind them and commits to memory the image of Billy Hargrove sitting at the counter with a bag of frozen peas over the black eye Nancy just gave him.

While Mom’s busy with Nancy, Mike walks right up to him and says, “You had something you wanted to say to me?”

Billy lowers the bag of peas, and still his expression doesn’t change, except to twitch into a smirk. He speaks clearly and evenly, loud enough that Mom and Nancy can hear from where they’re keeping watch from the sink. “Sorry about Halloween, Wheeler. It won’t happen again.”

“What happened on Halloween?” Mom asks carefully, wrapping Nancy’s knuckles with a strip of clean white cotton.

“Well, ma’am,” he begins, in a conversational kind of tone. “I was driving my sister home from school, and we came across some kids biking in the road. Will Byers, Lucas Sinclair, Dustin Henderson, and this one here — ”

 _“And?”_ Mike leans in, glaring Billy down and doing approximately fuck-all to intimidate him.

“And I didn’t slow down, and I didn’t stop,” he says, and the casual notes in his voice unravel one after the other until he’s back to just making sure every word comes out clear like crystal and impossible to misconstrue. “And it wasn’t right, and I’m sorry.”

Mike studies the unruffled set to Billy’s general demeanor and reels back, scoffing. He turns to gauge Mom and Nancy’s reactions, and they’re only somewhat satisfying. Mom at least looks horrified, but Nancy seems to be considering what Billy’s said, like she actually believes he’s for real. Mike flails with his hands.

“You don’t actually buy this, do you, Nancy? _You just said_ — ”

“I know what I said,” Nancy says, so calmly Mike has to wonder if they’re talking about different things. She looks from Mike to Billy. “I’m not sorry I punched you.”

Billy shrugs, awkward out of nowhere. “Nah, I had it coming.”

“Yeah, you did,” Nancy mumbles, flexing her wrapped fingers and wincing at her wrist.

Mom sighs and finishes wrapping ice in a hand towel. She presses it carefully to Nancy’s wrist until she takes hold of it on her own. “Okay, let me see if I understand this. You almost ran my boy down, but you didn’t. And now you’re in my kitchen saying you’re sorry. Are you going to do it again?”

Billy’s face, till now carefully neutral, flickers. Something bizarrely like regret. He says, “No, ma’am.”

She takes a steadying breath. “Okay then. Gosh, what — what do people do in this situation? Do I call your parents, or…?”

“No,” Nancy says, looking away quickly from Billy. “I mean, they know. That’s why they… took his… car privileges! Right, Billy?”

Mike glances skeptically his way, narrowing his eyes when Billy’s gone noticeably pale in the face.

“Yeah,” Billy croaks, not looking at them. “That’s it.”

“Okay, fine. Fine. I don’t know what I would even — _Mike, I can’t_ _believe_ — why didn’t you tell me about this when it happened?”

“What?”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Mom snaps, shaky but using her anger to power through it. “Why didn’t you come to me? What if you had gotten hurt? Would you have _said_ _anything?_ ”

“Well, I — ” Mike stammers. “You wouldn’t have let me go out for Trick or Treat Night!”

“That isn’t a reason to lie to me! _No_ ,” she says, holding up her hand to stop him. “It’s the same as lying, Mike, and you don’t lie to me. Not after Will and Barb went missing last year. I don’t care if you think I’ll be mad. It’s more important that I know you’re safe. Do you understand me?”

Mike squirms under the firm gaze she levels him with. He quails at the shift in her face from frustrated to disappointed. “Yes! I get it, jeez!”

“Good. As for you.”

Billy straightens out when her gaze swings over to him. He lowers the frozen peas to his lap, the shiner on his eye rapidly approaching a deep purple.

“I appreciate the apology. I’m sorry about your eye.”

“I’m not,” Billy murmurs, fidgeting briefly with the bag of peas. “I said what I was sorry about. You oughta be proud, though. Hell of a right hook. Good follow-through.”

Mike sees Nancy fighting off a smirk. Mom chuckles, similarly charmed apparently. Mike rolls his eyes.

“But you’ll wanna keep your wrist straight next time, Wheeler,” he says, holding up his hand in a loose fist to demonstrate.

“Next time I have to punch you out, you mean?” she says, glib and casual in a way Mike can’t believe.

“Be nice, Nancy,” Mom chides, still smiling. Her eyes when she turns back to Billy are softer. “Do you need a ride home?”

Billy puts the bag of peas down on the counter and stands abruptly. “That’s fine, ma’am. I don’t mind walking.”

“I didn’t mean that you have to leave now, Billy. Sit down.”

“I’m fine. I gotta head out anyway.”

“Five minutes. Wherever you’re going, it can wait five minutes.” Mom gives him a steady, uncompromising stare until his shoulders bunch up and he sits back down. “But there’s no rush if you need more time. Okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Billy mumbles, slapping the peas back over his eye and wincing.

Mom heaves a big sigh. “I’ll be in the next room. If I hear anything funny, I will not hesitate to send both of you to your rooms. Are we clear?”

Mike nods, sullen, and Nancy does, too. She’s noticeably less bothered by the whole thing.

She even goes to sit next to Billy at the counter. They stare sideways at each other for a tense handful of seconds, each icing their respective battle wounds, and then a laugh shivers over her face before passing onto Billy. _They’re giggling._

Five minutes ago she was trying to take his head off with her fists, and now they’re laughing.

_What the hell?_

“Just so we’re clear, I haven’t made up my mind how I feel about you,” she says, when their insane chuckle-party fades out.

“Doesn’t sound like you,” Billy muses.

Mike crosses his arms over his chest. “How would _you_ know?”

They look up at him, unbelievably, like they’d forgotten he was even in the room with them. Nancy smiles, coy and knowing and leans back against the counter.

“Yeah, Billy. How would you know?”

He purses his lips, nearly pouting and looking the opposite of tough from underneath the frozen peas, and says, “Steve said.”

“What did he say?” Nancy asks, softer, curious.

Mike gets it then. She used to date Steve, and now he’s made it his mission to rehabilitate the local douchebag, so now there’s overlap: Billy hears about Nancy, and Nancy hears about Billy. That’s a game of telephone Mike’s happy not to be part of.

“That you can’t be bought,” Billy says, looking embarrassed.

Usually Mike agrees, but this whole conversation is sort of going toward proving that there really are exceptions to every rule. Billy and Nancy don’t appear to be as hung up on that detail as Mike is, so he keeps that observation to himself in favor of gathering more intel.

“He said almost the same thing to me about you,” Nancy says, and there’s something about her voice and the way she’s looking at Billy that suggests there’s more there, that she’s saying something else without directly shining a light on it.

Whatever it is, it gets Billy to scoff and look away. “Does sound like him. Not much like me, though.”

“I don’t know, I think he just sees something you don’t.”

Billy swallows but doesn’t meet her eyes. She touches his arm and slides off her stool to stand. She gives Mike a pointed look before leaving the kitchen to go find Mom. Mike rolls his eyes.

“Those are some good women you got there, Wheeler.”

“Gross. Shut up.”

Billy’s eyebrows twitch, and then he snorts. “Not what I meant, but okay.”

“For your information,” Mike snaps, coming around to stand in front of him. “This game you’re running on everyone else isn’t gonna work with me.”

Billy lowers the peas. “What more do you want, kid?”

“I wanna know what’s in it for you. Why come here and tell my mom you almost ran us over? What’s the point trying to convince everybody you’re _not_ an asshole?”

Billy makes a face like _Why Me_ , which frankly, Mike gets.

He heaves a weary sigh when Mike doesn’t budge, saying, “Steve vouched for me, right?”

“For some reason.”

The tight set to Billy’s mouth flickers, almost smirking. “And Max vouched for me. Right?”

“Yeah…”

“And Byers, either one of ’em. What do they say?”

Mike scoffs but doesn’t answer. It’s annoying, endlessly so, that Will has been vocal enough in his support of Billy Hargrove, douchewagon extraordinaire, that even the dickwad himself knows it. Mike’s got even less of a handle on Jonathan’s opinion, but Billy’s alive and his face is only a little messed up, so it couldn’t have been that bad, after everything. It’s incomprehensible.

“It’s gotta come from me, I know that. And not just words, but the rest of it, too, okay? I know. So I’m making my rounds. I’m fixing it. Whatever I gotta do.”

 _“But why?”_ Mike presses. He can’t stand it when the math doesn’t add up.

“‘Cuz the psycho dirtbag shit doesn’t amount to anything, Wheeler. I’m sick of it.” He eases the peas back over his eye, frustrated, and jostles the shiner Nancy gave him. Wincing, he almost looks pathetic enough to forgive just on principle. “All this talking a big game and never doing anything that matters, it’s bullshit. I’m tired. I’m…”

Billy shakes his head, eyes pinched shut, and Mike —

Well, he —

Okay.

 _To an extent,_ at least, he understands why Will would root for the guy. A bona fide redemption arc? For Billy Hargrove? Will’s the best DM Mike’s ever seen. Of course he couldn’t resist just from a storytelling standpoint.

From the living room, Mike hears his radio crackle with static. It saves him the trouble of trying to come up with something suitably dickish to say to Billy, which is good, seeing as he doesn’t have much left in the way of disparaging comments to make.

He’s not quite ready to openly admit that maybe he was wrong about Billy, though. They’re a ways yet from that development.

_“Wheeler, you there?”_

Nancy’s icing her wrist on the couch, but Mom is gone, probably upstairs checking on Holly. Mike snatches up his radio and toggles on the speaker.

“Go for Wheeler, Mad Max.”

It’s a testament to her force of personality that Mike can hear her rolling her eyes at him.

_“Is my brother there? He’s not dead, is he?”_

“That’s a negative,” Mike says brightly. “Nancy almost punched his face off, but he’s very much alive. Whether this is a good thing remains to be seen.”

“Eat me, Wheeler,” Billy grouses, stepping out of the kitchen.

“Mike, come on,” Nancy says, frowning.

Max piles on, even without being there to know that she’s doing it. _“Don’t be a dick. Is he still there?”_

“Roger that. I’m looking at him right now. Are we sure he’s not still a douche?”

_“I’m sure. Can I talk to him?”_

Mike holds out the radio and waits with muted glee for Billy to cross the room to him. He’s careful about not touching Mike at all when he lifts it out of his hand and even more careful not to pull before Mike’s let go of it.

“Hey, Max.”

“Wrong button,” Mike and Nancy tell him at the same time.

Billy turns the radio over, frowning at it. He presses a different button. “Max?”

_“Billy?”_

“You have to hold it down,” Nancy tells him, trying not to laugh.

Through his teeth, Billy says, “Max? Can you hear me?”

_“I can hear you! Hey, can you come up to Hop’s before you go home?”_

“You gonna send him to come get me? I don’t have my car.”

_“Can’t you ask Steve to pick you up? He drives Dustin everywhere.”_

“I’m not calling Steve to come pick me up, Max. What am I, twelve?”

 _“Unknown,”_ Dustin chirps over the static. _“All current data is inconclusive. Incidentally, I have Steve here with me, and he’s gesturing as if to take the radio from me — ”_

_“Billy, are you at Nancy’s? Stay where you are. I’ll come get you.”_

Billy’s face turns red, and he whirls around to stomp into the kitchen with Mike’s radio. Weird, but Mike’s working theory on Billy Hargrove is that he’s crazy. He’s not interested in eavesdropping. He sits next to Nancy on the couch and puts his feet up next to hers on the coffee table.

“Do you feel any better?”

“Yeah, the ice helps.” She raises her eyebrows and continues in a tone that sounds almost sarcastic in a way that doesn’t quite make sense to Mike. “Feel sorta bad about Billy’s eye, though. Steve’s gonna be worried.”

“If he knew Billy was coming here, he knew it was gonna go like this,” Mike mutters, bored.

Nancy nudges his shoulder with hers. “Are you okay?”

“I guess. Why?”

“Just checking. Mom did kinda let into you.”

“Yeah, what was up with that? So unfair. Billy’s the one who almost killed four people, and I’m the one who gets yelled at?”

“Well, he came clean. You didn’t. If it makes you feel any better, she gave me the same talk last year when Will was missing. I snuck out, came home late. She didn’t know where I was. It’s not about whether she’s mad, Mike. I mean, she’s right to be, but that’s not it. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, gruff, agitated, blinking back the heat behind his eyes. “I know.”

Billy comes out of the kitchen then, sans frozen peas. He sets Mike’s radio on the coffee table by their feet. “’M gonna head out.”

“Steve’s coming to get you?” Nancy asks.

“Yeah, he said he’d be here.”

“I’ll wait outside with you.”

“ _Really_ , Nancy?”

“It’s all good,” Billy says, waving her off and ignoring Mike completely. “You don’t gotta do me any favors, princess.”

_“Princess?”_

“I’m waiting outside with you,” she says again, in a tone brokering no arguments. “Mike, go see if Mom needs anything.”

“Fine. You guys are being weird anyway.”

He grabs his radio and heads upstairs, only looking back once to see Billy holding the door for Nancy to walk out ahead of him. Mike shakes his head and continues up the stairs. His radio crackles.

 _“Golden Eagle to Goldfinch, we are on route,”_ Dustin announces, doing a voice, Mike’s not sure which.

“We said we weren’t doing codenames on the radios, Dustin.”

 _“No, you said we weren’t doing codenames,”_ he says, snippy, even over the radio. _“…Peregrine Falcon.”_

Mike stops on the top step, torn between arguing with him some more and accepting the nickname. At least his bird’s cooler than Billy’s.

 _“I like the codenames,”_ Lucas says, when Mike doesn’t answer. _“What’s mine?”_

Dustin doesn’t even hesitate. _“American Kestrel. Cool, right?”_

 _“You guys are nerds,”_ Max says, but sure enough. _“Do I have one? What about El? Oh, do Kali!”_

Mike sits on the stairs with the radio in his lap. He can’t see outside, but Nancy hasn’t come back in yet and Mom’s still with Holly. He presses the button on his radio while Dustin’s thinking. “What about an owl? Like a barn owl or… a snowy owl.”

_“Snowy Owl’s taken.”_

“By who?” Mike frowns.

_“Me. It’s mine.”_

_“Then who’s Golden Eagle?”_ Lucas asks, and rightly so.

 _“Steve’s Golden Eagle,”_ Dustin explains patiently. _“I’m radioing from his car. Hence, Golden Eagle to Goldfinch._ ”

 _“Does Billy know about this name you’ve given him?”_ Kali’s smooth voice comes over the crackly connection.

There’s a pause, and when Dustin goes to answer, Steve can be heard laughing in the background: _“We haven’t officially consulted him. Anyway! Codenames! What about… Northern Shrike?”_

 _“What is it?”_ El asks through Max’s radio, and Mike’s stomach flips.

 _“The shrike impales its prey on thorns and barbed wire,”_ Dustin explains neatly and succinctly. _“In the original Latin, the bird’s genus literally translates to butcher.”_

_“Gnarly! That’s gotta be you, Kali. What about birds that live by the ocean? If you say seagull, I’ll punch you.”_

_“What about a kingfisher?”_ Lucas says.

_“Oh, cool!”_

“Kingfishers don’t even live by water,” Mike says into his radio.

_“Well, neither do I anymore. I like it. Kay, that just leaves El.”_

_“What are you guys talking about?”_ Will asks, sounding thoroughly perplexed but like he can’t help smiling at whatever random conversation he’s just walked into.

 _“Codenames, Will,”_ Dustin replies dutifully. _“You’re Rook, by the way. The bird, not the chess piece.”_

_“Neat! I like crows.”_

Max speaks up again. _“Wait, Rook? That’s a kind of crow?”_

 _“They’re corvids,”_ Lucas answers. _“A bunch of birds fit in that category. Ravens, crows, magpies. Even blue jays. The list goes on.”_

 _“Magpie,”_ El says suddenly, brightly. _“I like that one!”_

“Then it’s yours,” Mike tells her. “You’ve officially got a codename.”

 _“Does this mean you’re endorsing the use of codenames on the radio?”_ Lucas squawks. _“I’m gonna mark this day in my journal.”_

“It’s not a big deal, Lucas,” Mike grumbles, shaking his head even though no one can see or hear him.

 _“ — wanna wrap it up. We’re nearly there,”_ Steve drones.

_“Did you guys catch that? I’m gonna have to disconnect here in a minute. But yes! Codenames are a go!”_

_“Dustin, get that thing outta my face! I’m driving — ”_

_“I like these radios,”_ Kali says, and as little as he knows her, Mike can tell she’s smiling or at the very least smirking.

_“Me, too. Dustin, don’t let Steve crash. He’s Billy’s ride, and I need to talk to him.”_

_“Thanks for the concern for my life, Max. Oh, hey, Nancy’s with him. Look, Dustin! She didn’t kill him!”_

_“Yikes,”_ Dustin exclaims, _“you could see that black eye from space.”_

_“That’s about what I expected.”_

_“Why didn’t you bring stuff then? This exact situation is why we’ve been stockpiling first aid kids.”_

“Take your finger off the button, Dustin,” Mike mutters.

_“Okay! We are at the objective! This is Golden Eagle and Snowy Owl, signing off. Everybody be safe out there.”_

Mike rolls his eyes, but he jogs back downstairs anyway to look out the window. He can see Steve and Dustin climb out of the car. They round the front of it to meet Billy and Nancy in the middle of the lawn.

Dustin notices Mike watching through the window and waves, cutting short his usual ritual of smiling at Nancy for minutes at a time anytime he sees her. Mike waves back, scowling mostly for show when Billy turns to look over his shoulder at him. He feels — not fond, but something suspiciously close — when Billy just scoffs and shakes his head.

 _“Dustin has quite the flair for dramatics, doesn’t he?”_ Kali muses, and through the window, Dustin scrambles to shut his radio off.

Nancy and Steve laugh, but Mike can’t tell what Billy does. He shuts off his own radio and slips outside. No point hiding when they’re his friends, too. Well, Dustin is. Steve’s basically an honorary friend at this point, and the jury’s out on Billy, but whatever. Mike can be civil. When it suits him. Probably.

“There he is,” Steve says, flashing a smile when he sees Mike. He doesn’t hold out an arm to hug him the way he does when it’s Dustin, but that’s pretty typical for them.

“Hey, Steve. Dustin.”

“Hey, man,” he greets, still a little red in the face from what Kali said. “Good of you to join us.”

“Yeah, everything cool? Well, I mean, your eye, Billy, jeez,” Steve huffs, mostly apologetic but a tiny bit amused, in spite of himself. He gestures at Nancy’s wrist, sobering in an instant. “You didn’t break your hand on his face, did you? He’s pretty hard-headed.”

Billy puffs up, but Nancy beats him to a reply.

“Apparently my wrist wasn’t straight.”

“Oh,” Steve says, raising his eyebrows at Billy. The edge of his mouth ticks up and up.

 _“What?”_ Billy growls, bristling, but looking not at all dangerous for it. “I can’t care about technique just ’cuz a girl kicked my ass?”

“Can I go on record saying that’s _my favorite thing_ you’ve ever said?” Dustin says, grinning.

“Whatever. Let’s just go already,” Billy mutters, taking a step toward the car. Then his face clears, and he turns on his heel to look at Nancy. “Hey, listen — ”

She watches him struggle — they all do — for a few seconds, and decides, inconceivably, that she knows what he’s trying to say. She says, “I know, Billy. Me, too.”

His features go loose with surprise, cheeks going splotchy, and like that takes care of that, nods and spins around to stomp out to Steve’s car. Mike’s entire face is doing something that feels like he ate a really sour candy, and apparently it’s hilarious to Dustin because he laughs straight from his belly.

“What?” Mike mumbles, frowning.

There’s some big joke happening around him, but he’s not getting it.

“Oh, nothing. You ready to go, Steve?”

“Yeah.” He looks at Nancy. “Hey, thanks for — y’know.”

“Breaking my hand on his face?” she asks lightly, starting to smile.

“You didn’t actually, did you?” he asks, worried all over again.

“No, Steve,” Nancy says, sighing and laughing, just a little. “It’s just sore. I’d be more concerned about Billy’s eye if I were you.”

Steve shrugs, nodding vaguely. “Yeah, but… well, yeah.”

Nancy’s smile softens. Mike is officially confused about everything. It must still be showing on his face because Dustin snorts as he backs away to the car.

Steve watches him go and starts in that direction, too, saying, “See you guys around.”

“Bye, Steve.”

“Bye,” Mike mumbles, giving a bland wave. He watches them drive away with Nancy standing at his shoulder and, bored again, switches his radio back on.

 _“ — because of his tan? How is he still that tan anyway? I have so many questions,”_ Lucas crows, sounding either flustered or impatient or both.

This is exactly why he wanted everyone off-air except for emergencies or official party business. The nature of _Billy Hargrove’s_ _tan_ is neither an emergency nor an official party concern that merits deliberation. He scowls at his radio, helpless to stop it.

 _“He does spend a lot of time in the sun,”_ Max says thoughtfully.

 _“I think it suits him,”_ Will says in a serene, contemplative tone. _“A goldfinch. Don’t you think, Kali?”_

Mike balks — at the opinion, at the moniker he’d been too distracted to notice properly the first time, at the fact that Will’s go-to on the matter at hand is Kali, at the certainty Mike feels, suddenly, that she’ll back him.

It doesn’t make him jealous, really. It doesn’t even irritate him. It just reinforces that feeling that he’s missing something. Like he’s missing a whole chain of somethings.

 _“Yes, Will, I agree,”_ Kali murmurs, sounding warm and impossibly near. _“I know just what you mean.”_

Holding down the button on his radio, Mike intones, “You guys are lucky Dustin shut off his radio.”

 _“Dustin turned his radio back on!”_ Dustin says in a strangled voice, and this time Steve’s outright cackling in the background.

Distantly, they can hear, _“Gimme that thing, Henderson — ”_

 _“Oh, Billy, come on!”_ Steve laughs, and he cuts out as they disconnect.

Nancy laughs and turns to head back into the house. She checks with him to see if he’s going to follow and shuts the door behind her when he doesn’t. He sits on the front stoop with the radio in his hand.

 _“Is a goldfinch a corvid?”_ El asks tentatively. _“Like a rook or a magpie?”_

 _“More like a canary,”_ Lucas fills in before Mike can say something altogether less charitable. _“You know canaries? The tiny yellow birds that go down in coal mines? Uh. Coal mines? Do you know about those?”_

 _“I’m guessing not,”_ Max says, still just holding down the button for Kali to speak.

_“Below the earth where men tunnel for their own gain, there is an invisible threat in the air borne out of the coal they seek. When it kills the bird, the men know to leave so they won’t die along with it. One life for many.”_

_“Like…”_ But El trails off, and after a second, Max lets go of the button.

The silence burns in Mike’s ears. He lifts the radio to say something, to reassure her because — he’s not sure. He just knows — and he doesn’t know how he knows, but he _knows,_ the way he always knew she was still out there somewhere — that she needs him.

 _Someone_ , he corrects, knowing that just because this silence sounds empty to him, it doesn’t mean it’s not full of words for El. Not when she’s got Kali and Max in the room with her.

A moment later, Max’s voice comes back over the air: _“ — don’t send goldfinches into mines, though. Right, Lucas?”_

Her tone very clearly says that there’s only one correct answer, regardless of what the factual truth might be, and Lucas responds in kind.

_“Nope, no goldfinches in the mines. No finches at all. None.”_

Something behind Mike’s sternum aches. Will’s not the only one in the party who understands the importance of a good redemption arc, and even if Mike can’t be moved to believe that Billy Hargrove is anything like El — he might be a little like Kali, he’s not sure — he understands why it matters so much to her. Whether it’s birds dying in the dark or a bully with a black eye and a stolen radio, of course she’d care.

Because that’s the other thing he can’t help but notice. El’s rooting for Billy, too. That’s what she meant that day, when they’d just gotten the Mind Flayer out of Will and she’d closed the gate and everything felt so strange and surprising but also exactly the way it always should’ve been.

_Friends don’t lie. New or old._

Mike didn’t get what she meant back then, but he does now. There was a time before El was their friend and a time before Max and Kali, too. The time before Billy is heading toward that same distant past every other _before_ has gone. So long as they let it.

 _“The really cool thing about finches,”_ Will starts, in a tone that’s genuinely enthusiastic and not just grasping around for a change of subject, _“is that they_ _evolve so differently based on their environment and available food sources that they don’t even look like the same species. A lot of them do have similar flight patterns, though, so if you’ve ever seen a small round bird hopping around outside, it was probably a finch.”_

 _“Duly noted, zombie boy. We’ll have to see if we — oh! Scratch that. The goldfinch has landed,”_ Max drones seriously. _“I can hear Golden Eagle and Snowy Owl bickering from here. Gotta go! Kingfisher out!”_

Mike smiles, surprised that he likes the sound of that.

The connection crackles back through, and Max can be heard far off saying, _“The goldfinch is here!”_

And much closer to the receiver, Kali saying, primly, _“Northern Shrike also signing off.”_

Mike waits, and so do Lucas and Will, listening. After a few seconds, El speaks.

_“I’m going. Can I come back after?”_

_“I’ll be around,”_ Lucas says, beating Mike to the button, the jerk.

As soon as the line’s clear, Mike follows. “I’m here. I’ll… I’ll be here.”

 _“Will?”_ El asks, and catches herself. _“I mean, Rook?”_

_“Affirmative, Magpie! I’ll keep my radio on.”_

_“Okay. Magpie signing off.”_

They give it a good ten or fifteen seconds of radio silence before they start back in on each other. Lucas beats him to the button again.

 _“Dude,”_ he says, and nothing else.

“What? Don’t even! Like you don’t when it’s Max?”

 _“I don’t get it. Are we still talking about codenames?”_ Will asks.

Even without the connection picking it up, Mike knows Lucas is laughing at him.

But in a weird way, he’s glad they ruled unofficial banter admissible for the radios. It’s fun and lighthearted and easy, the way a lot of things used to be when they were kids. He doesn’t know when he started to lose that, but he knows he has, and so has Lucas, in a way that Dustin and Will really haven’t yet.

That realization makes him want to preserve this feeling so they can keep sharing it for as long as they can. Who knows when they’ll lose the last of it for good.

He leans back with one hand on the porch and the other on his radio. The sun hits his face, and he closes his eyes.


	19. Like You Hung the Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy takes Will to get paint at the art store and it's generally very cute and touching uwu (I give up on summaries)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) Movie monsters  
> 2) Heart eyes  
> 3) Um, friendship

Will rushes around frantically looking for his shoes. They’re usually by the front door or kicked under his bed, but he can’t find them anywhere. The third time he jogs into the kitchen to check the backdoor, Bob looks up from his book.

“Whatcha lookin’ for there, bud?”

“My shoes,” Will says, almost plaintive. “I don’t know where they went.”

“Uh.” Bob looks pointedly around Will at the door where they’re splayed on the other side of the coatrack. “You’re not nervous about Billy coming to get you, are you? Because I don’t mind taking you to the store if you changed your mind about going with him.”

“No, that’s okay, Bob,” Will mumbles, sitting on the floor to pull on his shoes. “I’m not nervous.”

Bob’s looking at him from over the back of the couch, arms folded over the top. His smile is soft. “Okay, then is there something else on your mind? You seem frazzled.”

“I’m fine,” he mumbles, double knotting his laces. “I’m not frazzled.”

“All right,” he allows. “Well, hey, don’t forget your hat before you go. Your mom’s gonna give us both an earful later if you leave without it.”

“My hat,” Will repeats, looking around, laces still drawn taut. “Um, my hat…”

“I think you left it on the kitchen table,” Bob tells him, turning back to his book as if that’s all there is to it.

Will sees him smiling as he passes, though. His hat’s right where Bob said, laid out over a placemat in front of a chair he forgot to push in. He checks his watch one more time and shoves the beanie on over his hair. Patting down his pockets one more time, he realizes he doesn’t have the money Mom left him the night before. Did he leave it in his room?

There’s a knock on the door. He jumps back to his feet and runs to get it. Billy’s waiting on the front step wearing a denim jacket and the black eye Nancy gave him. Will can’t help grinning at him.

“Hi, Billy!”

“Byers. Hey, Bob.”

“Hey, Billy.”

“You ready to go?”

“Um…” Will feels his face get hot. “I think I left something in my room. I’ll be fast!”

“That’s okay — ”

“Why don’t you come in for a minute, Billy? Take a load off and defrost. I know Joyce won’t mind.”

Will holds the door open and takes off for his room as soon as Billy’s through. He can hear Bob and Billy talking for a minute, but he loses track of them once he’s in his room.

_“Ouch, do I wanna see the other guy?”_

_“Wasn’t a guy.”_

_“Oh! Yikes. Must’ve been some right hook.”_

_“That’s what I said.”_

Will looks through four of his drawers before he starts to feel frantic. He doesn’t know why this is happening today of all days. Knowing where things are is supposed to be his superpower, but now when he really needs to get moving, his memory’s turned into soup.

Bob knocks on his door and sticks his head in to peer at Will. A look of concern flickers over his face, and he asks, “What do you need?”

“My money. I can’t find it.”

“Oh, well, you put it in your pocket, Will. Gosh, that’s not like you to forget. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

Will turns out his pockets and checks his jacket as an afterthought. He sighs, embarrassed. “There it is. Thanks, Bob. I’m really fine, I promise. Where’s Billy?”

“In the kitchen. I thought you’d want him to see your art,” he adds cheerfully. “Take your time, bud. We’ll be out here.”

Bob raps his knuckles on the doorframe and heads off down the hall, whistling. Will blinks at the folded up bill in his hand, not sure what he’s really thinking because so much is happening in his head at once.

Billy’s looking at his stuff.

It’s fine. Not a big deal. Everybody says his drawings are good — even Barb, and Barb never lies to him about anything.

Will stuffs the money back in his pocket, takes a deep breath, and heads out of his room.

True to what Bob said, Billy’s standing in the kitchen looking up at the wall where all Will’s creations are hanging. Will comes around to look at them, too. They’re his best pieces: Jonathan, Nancy, and Steve squaring off against the demogorgon, Bob flying through the air like Superman, and one of Max and Billy asleep in the living room.

Will looks at Billy to see if he’ll recognize the flame of Max’s hair poking out from the blanket or his hand hanging off the edge of the couch to reach for hers on the floor, the two overlapping in a secure hold.

“You’re pretty good, Byers.”

Warmth spreads in his chest, embarrassed again, but not just. “Thanks, Billy.”

“I like this one,” he says, pointing at the drawing of Jonathan, Nancy, and Steve. “You really nailed Steve’s hair.”

“That’s what Jonathan said,” Will laughs, bouncing on his heels and plunging his hands into his pockets. “I made one of you and Max, too. Right there.”

Billy’s eyes track to the picture in question. He squints at it, glances out to the living room where Bob’s still tucked up on the couch with his book, and blinks, going back to the painting. He points at it, a dazed look on his face. “This is from that night?”

“From the next morning. I got up kind of early and woke Max up on accident, but that’s how I found you guys.”

“Hmm.” Billy crosses his arms over his chest, a bit of red misting his face. “Has Max seen it?”

“No, she hasn’t been by since I made it. Do you think she’d want to?”

Billy shrugs, avoiding eye contact, and clears his throat. “You good to go?”

“Sure, Billy. We’re going now, Bob! We’ll be back!”

“Okay. Be safe. We’ll see ya again, Billy.”

Billy nods and leads the way out to his car. Will climbs in on the passenger seat and cranes his neck to get a look at the three pedals along the floor of the driver’s side. Billy sees him looking as he’s getting in.

“You like cars?”

“I like driving,” Will says. It’s not the car he likes so much as he likes that they’re going somewhere together. “Barb showed me how over Spring Break, and Jonathan takes me driving sometimes, but he has to work a lot, so I don’t like to bother him with it.”

“Yeah, Max has been at me to teach her ‘cuz of you.”

“You don’t want to?” Will asks, smiling.

He shakes his head. “She already knows how. Her dad taught her like a year ago before she could even reach the pedals.”

“She just wants to spend time with you then,” he summarizes.

“I guess.” He starts the car, twisting the volume knob down well before the engine turns over. The radio’s still loud by the time it switches on, but it’s barely a murmur when he stops. “Tell me where I’m going.”

“Do you know where the grocery store is?”

Billy thinks as he’s backing down the driveway. “Yeah, by the gas station on Church?”

“The craft store’s after the gas station,” Will tells him, rolling his window down and holding his hand out to feel the breeze. “Church goes all the way to the interstate if you keep South. I know it seems like the middle of nowhere out here, but it’s really just a matter of knowing where you want to wind up.”

“You’re talkin’ about the 64, right? Runs East to West?”

“Yeah!” Will sits up in his seat to grin at Billy, still holding his hand out the window.

“Yeah,” Billy echoes, smiling a little, too. “I like to drive, too.”

That warmth from before flutters in his chest. Will tries to tamp it down, hoping it doesn’t show as fully on his face as he thinks it might, but he feels so warm, and he can’t help it. “Cool,” he mumbles, looking out the window again. “Thanks for taking me to the store, Billy. I know my mom put you up to it, but you didn’t have to.”

“She didn’t,” Billy says in an undertone. “Your mom asked me to talk to you, and I said I would ‘cuz your she’s been good to me. I think you know that.”

“I do.”

“Good. No one’s twisting my arm, kid,” Billy says, turning right onto Church Street. “Still feel like I gotta work off my bullshit on Halloween, and doesn’t cost you anything to let me, does it?”

“I guess not,” Will says, watching the gas station when they pass it up. “It’ll be on the right side after the next traffic light.”

“Thanks.”

“Why did my mom ask you to talk to me anyway?”

Billy flicks on his turn signal once he spots the store. He glances at Will as he’s swinging the car into the parking lot. “She didn’t tell you?”

“No. It’s not bad, is it?”

“Depends on your definition of bad,” Billy murmurs, pulling into a space and killing the engine. He eases back in his seat and tips his head to watch Will. “She thinks we got a lot in common.”

“Oh.” Will looks down at his seatbelt, heart skipping a beat.

Billy hums, thinking. The late morning sunlight filters in through the windshield, warm even through the wintry cold pulse in the air.

Will rubs his palms over his knees, trying to offset how sweaty they’re getting. He finds the longer that they sit there, the more he can’t look right at Billy without starting to feel like he’s going too fast for the moment they’re in. Like time is slowing down because his heart’s on a rampage and throwing everything else into a tailspin.

“Then… I don’t think that’s so bad,” he dares to say before pushing his door open and climbing out. He walks around to the nose of the car to wait for Billy.

He stalls a second longer in the driver’s seat, but he gets out, too. There’s a look on his face Will doesn’t know how to define. It’s kind of how he looked in the kitchen when he saw a version of himself holding hands with Max. Billy shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, lit up from behind by the sun so that he’s partly cast in shadow.

Looking up puts the sun on one side of his face, enough to illuminate his quick flash of a smile, and —

Will’s mortified at himself. Appalled at his feelings and at the things he never tries to notice but can’t help devouring as if he’s starved for a kind of food he’s never even tasted.

It’s not fair that he should be ashamed for this feeling, the wanting of it. Barb wasn’t ashamed. She isn’t.

“Followin’ your lead, little man,” Billy croons, walking up next to him and bumping Will’s elbow with his own.

He lets himself be buoyed along and walks in step with Billy, asking him faintly, “My mom really said we have a lot in common?”

“Yeah, Byers, and you know what?”

“What?” he asks, riveted, and flailing only a little when Billy nudges the brim of his beanie down low over his eyes. Will pushes it back over his forehead to look up at him, wide-eyed and warm.

Billy just smirks, eyes looking bluer for the bruising, and says, “Think I’m startin’ to see it.”

* * *

Tina’s reading the label of a new foam clay she wants to try when she hears a familiar voice in the next aisle over. She drops the tub into her basket, picks her opened sketchbook up off the shelf, and sets it in next to the liquid latex to go and investigate. Rounding the end of the aisle doesn’t reveal anyone, and the voices have faded off in the other direction.

It had sort of sounded like Billy, is all. Not surprising in itself, but Tina would’ve liked to discover him inspecting the shelves for a palette knife or fabric for a sewing machine. Oh, well.

She flips her sketchbook back open to her drawing of Blair from _The Thing_ and goes over her list again. The last thing she needs for the preliminary sculpture is a few tubes of acrylic paint. She makes her way on auto-pilot to the correct section and hears the voices sounding out again.

“ — don’t want to make things worse, I guess.”

“Have you even met your mom?” someone says, and this time there’s no doubt in her mind that it’s Billy. “She doesn’t swerve. I don’t know what you’re worried about.”

“I knew that was you!” Tina calls out, peeking around the end of the aisle and grinning. “Hi, Billy!”

“Nomura,” he says, and the black eye he’s sporting along with his resting sour face makes him look just like a kitten caught in a downpour. “Hey.”

“Oh, hi,” she adds, holding her hand up in a friendly wave at the kid watching her. “I’m Tina.”

“I’m Will.”

“Will Byers! I thought you looked familiar. It’s nice to meet you.”

He nods awkwardly, a red flush climbing up his little face. Billy crosses his arms over his chest, staring at her in silent challenge.

“Gosh, you’re so sociable,” she teases, spotting the small box of watercolors in Will’s hands. “Oh! An artist! Got any pieces on you?”

“Oh… No, I was just out of red and blue, so I came to get more.”

“Wanna see mine?” Tina fishes her sketchbook out of her basket and waves it like candy.

Billy cranes his neck a bit to get a peek at what she’s buying and scoffs, rolling his eyes. “God, again with the monster shit?”

“Yeah, obviously. Don’t you know me at all?”

Will cautiously accepts her sketchbook and flips open to where the spine’s creased. His eyebrows creep up toward his hairline. He turns back a few pages, lingering on her current magnum opus: the alien. “Wow,” he murmurs, holding it up closer to his face. “It looks so realistic.”

“Like that one, do you?” she asks, sliding a devious glance up at Billy’s salty expression. “It’s a big hit at parties.”

“You’re the worst.”

Pleased, she tells him sweetly, “Thank you for the compliment, Billy.”

“Have you seen these?” Will asks, adorably, holding the sketchbook up for Billy to see.

“Yeah, up close and personal,” Billy mumbles. “That thing was her Halloween costume.”

“Seriously? Just like this?”

“Yep, I scared everyone. It was awesome.”

“Cool,” Will gushes, eyes bright and wide. “You’re working on another one for next year already?”

“I am! It’s this one here,” she says, nudging him to flip ahead to the drawing of the Blair-Thing. It’s dreadful to look at. She’s pretty proud of it.

“Whoa.”

“That’s gnarly as fuck, Nomura,” Billy complains, a precious little scowl marring his face and deepening the wet kitten look he’s absolutely not at all going for.

“Thanks!”

“But how do you turn this into a costume?” Will asks, delightfully, genuinely curious and watching her, rapt, for a response.

“It’s not so hard,” Tina says, tilting her basket so he can see its contents. “The difference between dimensions is just in the materials. You ever think about expanding your medium?”

“No, but…” Will trails off, going back to her earlier sketches — candid character studies of Katie and Heather and even one of Steve. “I only just started with watercolors last year. Before that, I mostly used crayon and pencil. I’m not as good as you, though.”

“I bet that’s not true! I would love to see your stuff. It’s always fun running into other creative types in the wild,” she tells him with a wink.

The color in Will’s cheeks deepens, but he’s smiling this time. He’s sweet.

Tina’s an only child, but she always felt like she would’ve been a really cool big sister. Billy reaches for the sketchbook, not meeting any resistance from Will when he plucks it from his hands.

He turns it around so that Steve’s hazy portrait stares back at her. He’s got a pencil balanced between his nose and upper lip, a look of complete concentration on his face, even in spite of her shaky line work. Billy’s expression over the top of the page is suspicious.

“When’s this from?”

“A year, a year and a half ago? We had math together. Shared a desk.”

Billy hums thoughtfully and skims through the other pages. She sees him shake his head at her horror-themed drawings, but he flips back to the drawing of Steve more often than not, and he doesn’t seem to realize that she sees him doing it.

“I don’t like math either,” Will says, oblivious, fiddling with the sticker tag on his watercolors.

Tina laughs, feeling her face warm just a little bit. “Yeah, we goofed around a lot in that class. Our math teacher now would never let us get away with it.”

“Who, Tench?” Billy asks without bothering to look up from a more recent drawing of Morrissey. He nods at her hum and idly flips back to the drawing of Steve. Really, he doesn’t seem to know he’s doing it. “You ready to head out, little man?” he asks, snapping the sketchbook shut.

“Yeah, do you wanna walk with us, Tina?”

“Sure!” she tells him, accepting the sketchbook back from Billy. “Thanks, Will.”

Satisfied at her response, he struts out ahead of them with his haul in the direction of the registers. Billy hangs back in step with her, and she points a gleeful look at him, at the bit of color in his cheeks.

“You’re so sweet, Billy.”

“What? No, I’m not,” he grumbles, grouchy and realizing not a bit that he’s proving her point.

“You are! He looks at you like you hung the moon. It’s adorable.”

“That’s just his face,” Billy mumbles, turning a brighter shade of red. “He’ll grow out of it.”

“I hope not. You didn’t,” she teases, leaning her shoulder into his as they walk, and he’s so much taller and sturdier than her that it shouldn’t jostle him a bit.

He rocks to one side and steps out with the foot farthest from her. Ultimately, it decides her.

She flips back to that sketch of Steve with the pencil under his nose and carefully tears it out. The drawing of Heather’s on the other side, but Tina doesn’t mind parting with it. She sees Heather at cheerleading practice often enough, and she could do better now than this first attempt from last year.

A startled, almost horrified look crosses Billy’s face when she waves the liberated page at him. He catches it and flattens the drawing to his chest so that it’s sandwiched between his hand and his heart.

“It’s not my best work,” she muses, turning her gaze from him to cut him a break. “If you asked me to recreate it now, I like to think it’d come out a lot more true to life than my stuff used to. You have to do a thing _so many times_ just to get good at doing it one kind of way.”

She remembers that day pretty clearly thanks to that sketch Billy’s holding. They’d been doing a course refresher for an entire week ahead of finals, and neither of them bothered to take notes. Tina had been doodling to distraction, and Steve had been twirling his pencil, playing chicken with gravity. She’d started out aimlessly without really meaning to draw him, but once he’d caught her looking at him for reference, he’d done his best to strike a pose that would make her laugh.

Joke’s on him. Now he’s making that face forever.

“Just so you know,” she adds conspiratorially, “Steve Harrington is _the twitchiest_ subject I’ve ever drawn.”

Billy huffs a laugh, still just a little bit shaken, and says, “Yeah, I buy that.”

“He’s a good guy, though. Sweet.”

He doesn’t answer but smoothes out the drawing before easing it under his jacket, delicate, careful not to crease the paper.

“Billy, are you ready to go?” Will asks, trotting over with the sheer white tail of a receipt poking out of the cardboard flap at the front of his new watercolor set.

“Yeah.” He turns to Tina. “See you at school?”

“Mmhmm. Bye, Will. Don’t forget I want to see something of yours! Just ask Billy to smuggle it to me.”

“Ugh,” Billy says, but a smile’s starting to pull at the edge of his mouth. “Yeah, whatever.”

Will gazes up at him wonderingly. “Really, Billy? You will?”

He softens, and he’d already been pretty goddamn squishy. “Yeah, Byers. Sure.”

“Oh, cool. Awesome! Okay, bye, Tina!”

She waves and goes to the register to pay for her things. She tucks her sketchbook under her arm and all her new art supplies into her shoulder bag before walking out to her car. A quick glance around the parking lot tells her that Billy and Will haven’t left yet, but they don’t notice her walking out.

That’s fine. She’s got something she wants to work on right away, and it’ll be better not to have an audience.

Once she’s seated in her boxy Avenger, she digs around in her bag for a pencil and flips to a fresh page.

* * *

The drawing tucked up under Billy’s jacket crinkles when he gets into his car. He sneaks a hand over to ease it up against his ribs so it won’t bend while he’s driving. He doesn’t think Byers would give a shit if he saw Billy with it, but the instinct to hide always wins out.

Still, he can’t help but feel like a coward. Billy’s got more reason than most to lie about who he is, but he just gave this kid a bullshit pep talk about why he shouldn’t be so afraid to tell the truth.

How could he do that he’s not willing to live it for himself?

He holds his hand to his ribs where the drawing is, trying to decide how best to fix the conflict brewing behind his sternum. Byers gets in on the other side and neatly sets his kit on his lap before buckling his seatbelt. Billy’s still up in his head about what to do when Byers looks over at him.

“Billy? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, inching his hand under his jacket again. The crisp edge of the paper brushes his fingers, and he grabs it. “You mind holding this for me?”

“Sure. Oh!” Will laughs, holding the picture up to look at it. “I liked this one.”

He inspects Nomura’s sketch of Steve and the companion piece on the opposite side. Billy keeps waiting for him to think it’s weird that he has it, but Byers doesn’t react at all except to ask if they can listen to music on the way to his house. Could be he thinks Billy wanted it for the drawing of the girl on the back. That’d be an easy assumption to make, and while he might want his dad to think that, he’s less sold on fooling Byers. Not when he’s gone and made up his mind to be brave.

“Probably would’ve been easier just to ask him for a picture,” he says, casually, the way Steve might say it, and for a fraction of a second, he thinks maybe it’s innocuous enough to pass detection, but then —

Byers’ thumb catches on the white space between pencil and edge. He’s not quite meeting Billy’s eyes, but Billy doesn’t think that really has anything to do with the drawing or the subject of the drawing. He thinks, actually, that maybe it has more to do with how Byers has _been_ missing Billy’s eyes a lot of the time and how he’s only looked right at him once or twice when Billy was supposed to be looking somewhere else.

Yeah.

He’s not looking to have a whole conversation about it, but Billy knows by now that Steve accidentally read Henderson in on their whole deal, and apparently it was fine. Henderson’s not any different around Steve, and as far as he knows, judging by Byers’ reaction now and the way Sinclair was before, he didn’t go running his mouth off about it to everyone who would listen.

Maybe that oughta tip him in the direction of _not_ giving himself away and cutting himself open to spill his guts like this, but — he’s the one who said it.

This kid is like him, and hell, he really is. No wonder he’s so uptight about his secrets. No wonder he doesn’t want anyone looking right at him. Billy’s felt the same way a lot of his life, and he’s never been any happier for this thing he does where he wears lies like a second skin. All it’s left him with, really, is an inability to just say what’s in his heart without weeping.

Byers looks up at him, big eyes gone wider with epiphany. Billy doesn’t know what to make of that look when it’s pointed at him. He knows how Steve handled it when it was him, but he’d walked into that on accident. He didn’t set himself up to be skewered.

He remembers the first time he caught himself looking at a boy who looked back, and he remembers the sting in his cheek later when he acted on it. Remembers going home after and feeling different, like his dad would take one look at him and _know,_ but he hadn’t. Not then. Billy’d started to think he was pretty good at hiding until he came here, but lately, it seems like people can take one look at him and guess.

Even Nomura figured it out after two seconds, that he and Steve come in a matched fucking set. It should be easy to live with it hanging in the air like this. He just wishes Byers would say something.

“Because… because he’s… your friend.”

It’s such an obvious out, and Byers looks so resigned to it. He even kind of looks like Billy did at his age. Before everything good in his life went away. Does he really think their talk inside the store is gonna resonate with Byers unless he gets that Billy has skin in the game?

“He’s a little more than my friend, Byers.”

His face goes pink and then beet red. “Oh,” he says. “I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t. I think… your mom does, and the Chief. Probably Bob. Your buddy Henderson.”

“ _Dustin_ knew?”

“He got it outta Steve,” Billy tells him tiredly. “Not on purpose. We’re not… great at hiding it. As it turns out.” He palms his face, mortified but telling himself to get the fuck over it.

“But you have to?” Will fills in, looking sadder now, though he’s still red in the face.

Billy doesn’t want to have to talk about this part. He doesn’t particularly want to talk about any of it except to let Byers know he’s not alone and that he doesn’t have to keep acting like he is, but before he can get a word out either way, Byers looks down at his hands or maybe at Nomura’s sketch.

“My dad…” he starts to say, until his voice tapers off.

Those two words are enough for Billy. He knows what they mean to him. It doesn’t stop his chest aching something fierce, but yeah, he knows.

“He used to say I… he called me…”

“Mine, too,” Billy tells him, trying to get there before Byers says that word he’s dancing around. He doesn’t need to hear it out loud to know they’re talking about the same fucking thing.

“My mom — ”

_“Loves you.”_

“I know she does,” he answers, still in that small, thready voice.

Billy tips his head back, and the space it opens up in his throat makes it feel so much easier to breathe. It helps with the building heat in his eyes, too. He shakes his head, remembering blonde hair catching golden in the sun and blue eyes bright with tears.

“You gotta hold on to that shit, Byers.” He clears his throat and wipes at his eyes. “Sometime it’ll be the last time, y’know? Guess I don’t have to tell you that. What does Max call you, Zombie Boy?”

Byers scrubs at his eyes, too, and Billy doesn’t know why he always has to go and make people cry like this. He’s never going for it.

“I’m not sayin’… I don’t mean like something’s gonna happen…”

“It’s just your dad?” Will asks, and God, the torn open look on his face. “You and him?”

A lump forms in Billy’s throat. He looks out the window, catching sight of Nomura sitting in her car across the parking lot, head bowed and far away enough that there’s no way she can hear them talking.

“Him and Max’s mom,” Billy says, leaving the space after to mean exactly that. Sometimes he thinks it might as well be just him and his dad still, for all that Susan’s never made one bit of a fuckin’ difference. He watches Byers then, his coiled silence sitting like a loaded spring.

Questions he doesn’t know how to ask. Words he’s used to keeping on the inside but doesn’t know how to make whole on the outside.

“How do you live with it when people… hate you just for how you feel?”

Hell, Billy has no idea. He’s been telling himself for years that he doesn’t feel — that he can’t — but that’s just tough guy bullshit.

He falls right away at the first sign of interest like a fuckin’ dumb-shit, and kindness hits him like a drug.

Every goddamn time he’s ever had his ass handed to him for trying to be happy, he swore that was it, and every time, he believed it. As if he could just throw a fucking switch in his brain and be different. As if there was a way to be somebody else, somebody who didn’t want the things he’s always wanted.

How does he live with it? In the most literal sense, with a busted ear drum and a scar in his cheek. With a kid sister who’s got his back. With a boyfriend who doesn’t know how goddamn patient he is.

Steve’s likeness peers up at Billy from around the pencil, waiting for an answer just like Byers is.

Loving someone’s never an abomination, right? That’s the advice Billy was given, and isn’t is true?

He didn’t get his ass beat to the fuckin’ moon because of Gene or because of any kind of way that he is, no matter what he told himself to get through it with his sanity intact. It happened because his dad’s a bastard. That’s it. That’s the only reason there’s ever been, for all his shame and hatred and fear. Not because he feels. Not because he loves as intensely as he does anything.

“Can’t help how you feel anymore than you can help someone hatin’ you for it.” Billy’s voice dies out, and he has to breathe before he can try again. “It’s not wrong, Byers. It's keeping it locked up that’s wrong.”

“Does it ever get easier?”

“That’s down to you. You find people you trust, then yeah, it does,” Billy tells him, thinking about how completely his life flipped around once he put up and owned all his bullshit, good and bad. The friends he started to make. The changes in how he’s started to look at himself because of them. “And you can’t trust everyone, but when you choose right, it’s worth it. You get better at it, too. Pickin’ ‘em out of a crowd.”

“Is that how you and Steve…” Will trails off again, sneaking a sideways look at Billy this time.

“How we, what?”

“Is that how you found out? That you liked each other.”

Billy laughs, surprised at the question, at the balls. He starts the car and tweaks the volume so he won’t be competing with Rob Halford.

“Me and Steve,” he murmurs, liking the sound of it. He’s not sure if he’s ever said it out loud before.

He glances at the radio, recognizing the part of the song they’re at.  
  


_You won’t be there tomorrow  
_ _Say it isn’t true  
_ _I can’t take this pain and sorrow  
_ _Can’t you see my heart is broken in two  
  
_

“Me and Steve,” he says again, rolling it around in his mouth.

That night’s still vivid in his memory. How he ripped himself away from that first kiss, thoughts tumbling one over the other: _Why does it feel this good if I’m not supposed to want it? Why does he want me if it’s wrong?_

Billy didn’t think Steve would stick around. He thought he’d use Billy up and bail. He didn’t know he’d been asking himself those same questions Billy was thinking, just for a different reason.

Because Billy was trying to hurt himself, but Steve was trying to avoid hurting anyone.

“Tell you the truth,” he starts, “I came at him from kind of a blindspot. He didn’t see me comin’ at all.”

That gets Byers looking right at him. “You were brave.”

Billy shrugs. “Stupid.”

“There’s a difference?” Byers asks, teasing just a little bit.

“I mean,” Billy muses, turning onto the dirt road that’ll take them back to the house, “is this stupid, me tellin’ you all this?”

“No,” he says right away, looking just like his brother with his eyes gone all serious like that.

A bloom of something warm hits Billy deep in his chest. It’s the same kinda way he feels when he does something right with Max or anytime Steve doesn’t realize how smart he is. He thinks it might be pride.

“Billy…”

He pulls up outside Byers’ house and kills the engine. He takes Nomura’s drawing back when Byers hands it over, finally free to look at it just as much as he wants. At Steve’s funny fish lips and the shape of his nose and the steady look in his eyes that Billy can picture the color of even now, in sun or in starlight or in the halogen lights of Ms. Carter’s class.

God, what a stupid face. Billy can’t wait to see him again.

“Billy,” Byers says again, starting to smile at whatever soppy look Billy’s got on his face. “Thanks. I’ll keep your secret.” His face turns red all over again, and he looks away. In his smallest voice, he asks, “You’ll keep mine?”

“I swear,” Billy tells him, meaning it probably even more than he ever has for himself.

Byers nods, keeping his eyes lowered. “I’ll… try not to hide so much all the time. Not with everyone.”

Billy holds out his hand to shake on it, but Byers slaps his hand instead and makes a fist.

“You have to bump it, too.”

“I have to what?”

“Bump it. Then it’s like a secret handshake.”

Billy curls his fingers up into the most harmless fist they’ve ever formed and bumps Will’s knuckles.

“A secret handshake,” Billy repeats, charmed in spite of himself. He can’t help it. Every time he sees this kid, he walks away liking him a little bit more.

“That one’s not technically a secret. Everybody does it.”

“Well, damn, little man. Hit me with some shit nobody’s ever seen then. What’re we even doing?”

Byers laughs and takes off his seatbelt. He twists sideways in his seat and holds out his hand again. It only feels right to meet him halfway, and if Billy gets a stupid smile on his face over it, well, Byers doesn’t seem to mind.

* * *

The drawing she throws together isn’t anything fancy. It’s just a quick sketch of Will and Billy the moment they both looked up at her.

It stands out in her memory, and the reproduction is shaping out to be too cute. Next to Billy’s likeness, Will’s looks so small and fragile. Big eyes peering out from a young face, small and watchful. The lines are so much more confident here than in her sketch of Steve. She’s proud of that improvement, of how far she’s come to get to it.

She smudges the graphite around Billy’s eye to account for the shiner. The veins in the paper cause the color to feather out more than she wants.

“Ah, you bastard,” she murmurs under her breath, dabbing at the bleeding pigment with her eraser. “Get off.” She’s careful to catch the few eraser shavings on her fingertips so she won’t smear the line work with a thoughtless swipe of her hand. Correcting her grip on the pencil, she tries rendering out the bruise one more time, and on this attempt, it actually looks like a black eye. Triumphant, she smiles, whispering, “There you are.”

Satisfied, she writes out a note on the bottom of the page:

 _Fair’s fair. Thanks for sharing with me! :)  
_ _Don’t ever stop making things! — Tina  
  
_

She closes her sketchbook and sets it carefully on the seat next to her. A second look tells her she’s missed her chance to walk the drawing over to them, but that’s no big deal. She’ll see Billy at lunch and give it to him then.

The engine turns over, and Queen blasts from the speakers. She turns it up a bit louder and backs out of her spot, tapping her hands against the wheel in time with the piano.

 _“I’m just a poor boy,”_ she sings along, badly, but that’s okay. No one’s around to hear. _“I need no sympathy…”  
  
_

_Because I’m easy come, easy go  
_ _Little high, little low  
_ _Any way the wind blows_  
_Doesn’t really matter to me  
_ _To me_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kay sorry for being absent lately. Without getting way too into the details, I had to move out of my apartment, and where I'm living now I don't have internet. I don't know when I'll be back. Shoutout to this Starbucks for making my cappuccino and not coming out to shake their fists at me in this parking lot rn.
> 
> Stay safe, bebs. Wear a mask.


	20. All This Could Be Yours

> When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.
> 
> — Fred Rogers

Part Four: Life is Far More

Max likes Steve. In that way that her dad’s always telling her all people _can be_ good, he is.

He’s kind and brave and honest, and he’s got no problem laughing at himself when he does something stupid, which is a lot of the time. It’s pretty obvious Billy likes all those things about Steve that make him good, too, but seeing as she’s sort of crashing their date, she’d probably notice even if they _were_ halfway good at hiding it.

She’s not stupid, though. She knows Billy was dating Gene back in California, and she knows how badly that ended.

So she’s happy Steve’s a good guy. First of all, because she’d have a hard time enlisting help to egg his house if he turned out not to be, but _second of all_ , because he invited her and Billy to go with him to see this movie.

Apparently he saw it last weekend with Dustin and liked it enough to want to come see it again. Max doesn’t know much about Mozart or music, but she learns quickly — during the opening credits, as a matter of fact — that Steve’s _really_ into music. He leans over Billy’s seat to get her attention and points excitedly at the screen, whispering about sound design and _audio engines_ when Billy catches his hand and gives him a pointed look.

“Oh. Sorry, Billy.”

He shrugs and lets go of Steve’s hand, giving Max a sideways look that she pretends not to see. She makes a grab for the popcorn in Billy’s lap and throws a handful at Steve’s face when he steals it back.

The auditorium’s almost completely empty, but there are a few older people near the front and a young couple in the center row. She doubts this movie theater ever gets properly packed to capacity, but the turnout’s still a little better than she expected for a title that released back in September.

About fifteen minutes into the movie, though, she gets it.

When Steve said it was about “a guy who writes music in the 1700s,” her first thought was that it would be boring. She expected powdered wigs and confusing dialogue and bland music, but that’s not what it is at all. It’s full of life and drama, and a few times it’s so funny she even catches Billy covering his mouth to try to keep from laughing. She was more ready for something like those stuffy Shakespearean plays Billy likes so much where every other line has to be translated on the opposite page, but she can see why Steve wanted to watch it again and why he chanced asking them along even though it didn’t sound that impressive going off the summary.

After the credits roll, she and Steve walk out of the auditorium in step with each other. He’s still really excited about the movie and something called perfect pitch that doesn’t sound as cool as he makes it out to be, but it’s fun to listen to him go on and on. Even if she can’t quite summon up the enthusiasm to match his.

It’s as he’s repeating something Dustin told him about Mozart’s symphonies that she realizes Billy’s not with them. She looks around.

“Billy!”

He glances up from where he’d been lagging a good ten feet behind them. Max waves for him to catch up, and he does, but something’s off. Steve jostles him, grinning, not noticing that anything’s wrong.

“Surprised you’re not giving me shit about being so excited,” he muses, leaning into Billy’s side. “Seemed like you couldn’t wait when the movie was going.”

“No way, Harrington,” Billy murmurs, smirking. “I think it’s sweet.”

“Shut up,” Steve laughs, meaning anything _but_ shut up, judging by his smile. “Well, hey, did you like it?”

Billy hesitates. Something flashes quickly over his face. Panic.

“Mr. Clarke!” Max shouts, pressing her hand to Billy’s arm to get him to stop in place, and to get him paying attention to her instead of Steve.

“Yes?” Mr. Clarke says, looking confused until he spots Max. His face brightens. “Oh, Max! Hi there! What a nice surprise. Uh, Jen, do you want to go on ahead? I’ll be right behind you.”

The woman with him flashes them a polite smile and sensibly escapes.

“You must be Max’s brother. Billy, right?”

“Yes — oh, uh…” Billy shakes his hand. “Yes, sir.”

Mr. Clarke nods approvingly. “That’s a good handshake. Says a lot about you.” He lets go of Billy’s hand and goes to shake with Steve. “And you, gosh! Steve Harrington. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Steve smiles easily. “Yeah, back before you had a mustache.”

“Ah, yes, well, helps me look the part. I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting to see any students tonight. What’d you think? Honest opinions only. I promise Mozart won’t be offended, and neither will I.”

“It’s Steve’s second time watching,” Max says immediately.

But rather than taking the wind out of his sails, it just gets him going on about his newfound appreciation for music all over again. Mr. Clarke listens attentively, nodding along eagerly to everything Steve tells him. He seems to be genuinely interested in hearing Steve’s point of view, which is kind of sweet, Max has to admit.

She tugs at Billy’s wrist. “Are you okay?”

“What?”

“Are you okay?” she asks again, giving him a look he’s always been pretty good at ignoring.

Like he did with Steve, he hesitates. And that’s new. Different. Usually he clams up right away when the truth isn’t easy for him to say, but he really seems to be fighting with himself over how to answer her.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“That’s so neat, Steve! I’m glad to see you’ve found something to be passionate about. You know, if you haven’t already, I’d really encourage you to try your hand at an instrument of some kind. Piano, guitar, drums… just to see if it aligns with your interests. I actually play a little bass guitar myself…”

Billy pulls gently at her hand so that she lets go of him. “I’ll be at the car, okay?”

“Okay — ”

“…you start to learn all about technique, and it’s like a whole world opens up — oh, I always do this. Get me going about anything I’m halfway excited about, and it just bores everyone else to tears. But really, Steve, this is wonderful. I hope you keep at it.”

“Yeah, I want to,” Steve says, a little distractedly, watching Billy hurry out through the exit doors. “Uh, thanks, Mr. Clarke. I’m gonna do what you said, I think.”

Max looks between them and the exit, not knowing whether to give Billy space or run out after him. He said he’d be at the car, though, so maybe that means he wants them to take their time. She’s not sure. It’s still kind of difficult knowing what to do with him, even on a good day.

“Great!” Mr. Clarke gushes. “I’m sure I’ll hear all about it. I’ve got Dustin again this year, and he’s your biggest fan.”

Steve laughs, his whole expression brightening up. “He’s the one teaching me about all this stuff ever since Nancy talked me into it.”

“Nancy Wheeler! Yes, gosh, I remember all you kids. That’s great, Steve, really. I’m happy for you. Sounds like you’ve got plenty of support pursuing this new skill of yours.”

“Yeah, it’s turning out to be a lot cooler than I expected.”

Max fidgets with her hands a second longer, unsure, and finally runs out ahead of them to try to catch up with Billy. She gets no further than the sidewalk before she hears him call her name. She whirls around to see Mr. Clarke’s date plucks a tiny cigarette out of Billy’s hand and stub it out against the wall. She waves her hand to clear the smoke from the air and points at Billy’s face.

“I didn’t share that with you,” she tells him.

“Don’t even know what you’re talkin’ about,” he drawls, languid.

“There you are!” Mr. Clarke says, coming through the doors right after Steve. “Oh, my manners. I didn’t even introduce you, did I? Jen, this is Max — she’s in my class this year — Steve’s a former student, and you’ve met Billy.”

Jen flashes a smile full of straight, white teeth. She’s really pretty, Max is sort of surprised to notice. She starts urging Mr. Clarke out into the street, saying, “Yep! Great kids, Scott. Really great. You ready to go?”

“Yes! It was wonderful seeing you kids. Max, I’ll see you on Monday, okay? Have a good night!”

“Night, Mr. Clarke!” Steve waves and gives Billy a once-over. He glances at Jen and Mr. Clarke, then back at Billy. “Did you — ?”

“Nope,” Billy says, slow, peeling his shoulders off the wall. “Not me.”

“Hey, you didn’t say if you liked it or not,” Steve reminds him, falling into step with Billy and Max on the way to Billy’s car. “What’d Mr. Clarke say? Honest opinions only?”

Billy hums and spins his keys around on one finger. “That Salieri guy was kind of a dick.”

“No arguments there,” Max says. “What about the music? Did you like the music?”

“Yeah, actually.”

Steve grins, excited all over again. “Right? It was really good!”

“Guess I know what the rest of your weekend’s gonna look like,” Billy muses, tossing his keys up in the air and catching them. “At least tell me you’re not gonna shop brand new. The records are one thing, but a guitar’ll probably set you back a couple hundred, easy.”

“That’s true. Wanna come with me?”

“What, and keep you from paying full sticker price on a hand-me-down? I don’t know, Harrington. I might have homework.”

“I’ll go with you!”

“Yeah? Really?” He hangs back to match Max’s pace, and Billy doesn’t slow down or turn around. Steve keeps walking with them even when they pass up his BMW. “Cool. You’re a better negotiator than Billy anyway.”

“Thanks for noticing.”

Billy unlocks her door and then comes back around the front of the car. “It’s open, Max.”

“Okay.” She turns to Steve and hugs him. “Night, Steve. Thanks for inviting us out tonight.”

“Hey, of course.” He hugs her back — he gives really good hugs, Steve does — and he smells like that new cologne Billy’s started wearing.

She pulls away and walks around the front of the car to her side. Even trying not to stare, she catches a glimpse of Steve looking steadily at Billy, smiling and not saying anything. She can’t see Billy’s face, but she shouldn’t be watching them anyway, so she climbs into the car, buckles her seatbelt, and waits. Both the windows are rolled up, so she can’t hear whatever they’re talking about.

After a while, Steve heads back to his car and drives away, and Billy takes his sweet time getting in behind the wheel and putting the key in the ignition.

“Steve’s nice,” she says, aiming for subtle.

“Yeah,” Billy murmurs, smiling and huffing a laugh, and apparently _not_ giving a shit about playing it cool. “Can’t believe he likes me. What an idiot.”

Max snorts, and when that gets Billy laughing softly under his breath, she can’t help but just look at him. Whatever Jen said to Billy that drained away all his panic, Max wants to put it in a spray bottle and follow him around with it whenever he gets in his moods. They’re way less frequent nowadays, but that just means he’s sad more than he’s angry, which is almost worse. At least she felt like she could rail against his anger. The sadness is harder to fight.

“Well, I like you, and I’m not an idiot.”

Billy shakes his head and drops his hands into his lap. “’S different.”

“ _How_ is it different?”

“You always wanted to like me,” he says, looking at her for a long moment.

Her ears burn, and she averts her eyes, defensive under the spotlight of his focus. “So has he!”

“Nah.” Billy waves his hand vaguely. “Tried to get me to kick his ass the night we met.”

“Tried?”

“Didn’t do it _._ Maybe I kinda wanted to, but I didn’t. Are you cool if we grab milkshakes somewhere? I want a milkshake. And fries. Maybe a burger. Do you want a burger?”

“Billy, are you okay?”

He relaxes in his seat and rolls his shoulders back. Something in his neck pops, and he sags even more into his seat. Almost impatiently, he says, “Just hungry. They gotta have a drive-thru _somewhere_ , don’t they? God, what I wouldn’t do for a McDonald’s right now. Chicken nuggets? _Fuck,_ Max. Help me. Where am I going?”

“Billy, you haven’t even started the car yet.”

_“What?”_

“Billy — ” She smothers a laugh with her hand. “Billy, do you want me to drive?”

“No. No way.”

“Well, are you going to? Because… at this rate we’re never getting those milkshakes.”

He turns to look at her, wide-eyed and hopeful. _“Milkshakes_. _Max_ … let’s get milkshakes.”

She blinks at him. “Did something happen? You’re acting really weird.”

Billy rubs a hand over his face. “I’m tired. No, I’m not. Just… feels good to sit. Y’know?”

“Uh huh.”

“ _Fuck,_ I never used to get like this smoking with Gene. What the fuck.”

His eyes are closed, so he doesn’t see her unbuckle her seatbelt and reach behind the wheel for the keys and pocket them.

“So that’s why you’re not upset anymore.”

“‘Bout what?”

“The movie, Billy? Something was bothering you?”

His mouth falls open and his eyes drift open, too. “Oh, yeah. I dunno, Max. Didn’t you think it was sad?”

“Well, yeah, but it’s just a movie, Billy. It’s not real.”

“Not the movie, but — ”

He shifts in his seat and paws blearily at the seatbelt when cuts him under the chin. Max lets him struggle for a few seconds, distantly wishes she had a video camera, and presses the button that unfastens his seatbelt. Billy looks down at the click and methodically pulls the seatbelt up and over his head. He sets it down gently by the door so it winds back up slowly instead of slapping in place.

“The guy, right? M-Mozart — he thought that Salieri dick was his friend and… thought he was safe, but this guy thought he had the right, Max.” He drops his head back against the seat, and the look on his face is far away again, and sad. “Like he could — hurt whoever he wanted and get away with it, and he did. And the Mozart guy was just locked into this loop with someone who was destroying him. I feel stuck, too,” he murmurs. “Guess I deserve it, huh?”

She swallows, out of breath suddenly, eyes stinging. “No.”

Billy laughs, eyes slipping shut. “You’re sweet, Maxine.”

“Well, you’re stupid,” she mutters.

Someone knocks on Billy’s window, and she jumps. Billy lolls his head toward the noise, grins, and rolls down the window.

“Hey, Stevie.”

“What are you guys still doing here?” he asks, ducking to look at them through the open window.

“Have we not…” Billy slaps a hand over the ignition. “Oh, shit.”

Max takes the keys out of her pocket and waves them. She hides them away again when the jingling catches Billy’s attention. “I’m not giving these back until you stop being weird.”

Steve sets his hand against the window. “What’s going on?”

“He’s high,” Max summarizes. “Can you take us home?”

“Fuck that, I don’t wanna go back,” Billy huffs, frowning at the steering wheel. He looks up at Steve and — _pouts_. “Don’t make me.”

Steve stammers. He looks past Billy to Max. “Don’t you have a curfew?”

She shrugs. “They’re out tonight, and they don’t really stick to it ever since the thing at the lab. I think Neil’s afraid of Hop coming back to the house.”

“Why didn’t you say so, Billy? Jesus, I would’ve just picked you guys up tonight.”

“I want a milkshake,” Billy mumbles, completely ignoring what Steve just said. He leans his head out the window and lays his cheek on the back of Steve’s hand. “And fries.”

Steve stares at him and then at Max. He says, “Billy, um…”

Billy breathes in deeply and lets it out in a big sigh. Then he doesn’t budge.

“Okay, uh, Max? You wanna help me with him?”

“Actually I’m really enjoying the show.”

He gives her a sour, harassed little look that makes her laugh, and she gets out of the car to help him coax Billy out of the car. He’s a lot more cooperative once he’s on his feet, but he keeps an arm around Steve’s shoulders anyway. Max doesn’t think it’s necessarily a balance thing. Steve dumps him in the backseat of his car and spends a handful of minutes gently peeling Billy’s hands off him while Billy laughs at him.

“Are you taking us home then?” Max asks from the front seat.

“No, we’re going for milkshakes,” Billy says, sprawled out across the backseat but with an arm around Steve’s neck so he can’t get away.

 _“Billy,”_ he protests, muffled, until he can come up for air. His hair looks like he just stuck his finger in an electrical socket. Sternly, for Steve anyway, he says, “Nobody’s getting milkshakes if you don’t let me up.”

There’s a stalled moment of silence, and then, contemplatively, “’S kinda hot when you get mean, Steve.”

“Oh, my God, Billy.”

Max isn’t quite fast enough to stop her laughter. Steve scrambles out of the backseat, shuts the door behind him, and rounds the front of the car. From where he’s laid out in the back, Billy flops unhappily on the seat. He gets all huffy like a giant unhappy baby.

Steve gets in behind the wheel, frazzled and pink-cheeked, and says, “Okay, jeez. God, Milkshakes? We’re going for milkshakes?”

“I don’t think we’re getting him into a restaurant,” Max tells him, choking back the last of her laughter.

He hums, thinking. “There’s a drive-in out by the record store that has really good malts and ice cream. Pretty decent milkshakes, too.” Quieter, to Max, he says, “You guys were really just sitting there that whole time?”

“I think he thought we were moving for a minute, but yeah, pretty much. What were you doing? I thought you left.”

“Didn’t feel like going home. Thought I’d drive around for a bit.”

“You don’t have a curfew either?”

“My parents aren’t home,” he says, turning smoothly onto a well-lit street. “They’re not usually. I kinda just do whatever, I guess.”

“Oh. That sounds… kinda lonely.”

“Hmm? Well, no, I mean, it’s just how it is. They travel a lot for my dad’s job, but they get back when they can. They used to take me with them before I started school, but then they had to start leaving me with a nanny, and _that_ sucked. I like this better.”

Max can’t really see it. She hasn’t seen her dad in four months, and she hates it. They talk on the phone, so that’s something, but she’d rather be sitting down across from him in his kitchen back home, playing cards or baking banana bread or drinking sweet tea they brewed all day in the sun.

She misses him. Steve probably misses his parents, too. Maybe it’s better not to say that, though.

“What are you gonna do after this? Keep driving around?”

“Guess that was the plan, but now I’m glad I looped back and saw you guys. Didn’t know you were such a lightweight, Billy.”

“You fuckin’ take that back,” Billy grunts, not very convincingly.

Steve pulls into the drive-in and sings, _“Biiiillyyyy Hargrooooove, done in by a joint…”_

A girl skates up to Steve’s window just as he’s rolling it down. “Hey there! Thanks for coming to — oh, my gosh, Steve, hi! Wow, it’s so cool to see you outside of school for a change.”

“Oh, yeah. We have, uh, U.S. History, right?”

She laughs breathlessly. “That’s right! Ms. Click’s class, first period.”

Max looks expectantly at Steve, knowing what this girl doesn’t, that Steve doesn’t know her name. _It’s right there on her_ _name tag_ , and he’s still casting around trying to find it. Luckily for all of them, Billy’s still laid out in the backseat not paying any attention.

“Hey! Tammy, right?” Max pushes Steve out of the way and leans out the window. “How are the milkshakes here?”

“They’re good! Umm, actually, they’re all just a dollar tonight, so you’re in luck. The chocolate cake shake is my favorite, but we also have regular chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and banana cream.”

“Ooh, chocolate cake. That’s what I want.” Max leans back into her seat. “Billy, what are you getting?”

Billy groans and fights his way to sitting up.

Tammy catches sight of him then. “Is that Billy Hargrove?”

“More or less,” Steve says. “Uh, how’s the banana cream? Any good?”

“It’s pretty good.”

“Okay, then I’ll — ” He startles at Billy hooking his chin over the edge of his seat. “I’ll have that one. Billy, what do you want?”

“Strawberry.”

“And fries?” Max asks him.

“Ooh, fries,” Billy murmurs, eyes drooping closed again.

“Oh-kay, anything else?” Tammy prompts, scribbling a little more on her notepad.

“No, that’s it for us. Thanks.”

“Great, then that’ll be eight dollars even.”

Steve hands her a ten dollar bill and waves her off when she goes to get change from her apron. Her face turns pink at the gesture, but he barely even looks at her.

“Thanks, I’ll — I’ll have that right out for you.”

“Cool, we really appreciate it.” Steve flashes a smile and looks down to put away his wallet.

Tammy hesitates, but then she sees Max watching her and skates off, flustered.

 _Just as well,_ Max thinks.

Steve nods to himself, perfectly oblivious in his cheer. “This was a great idea. Dollar milkshakes, you guys!”

“Yeah, it’s pretty exciting,” Max muses, checking Billy for a reaction, but he’s still in his own little world. “Thanks for buying, Steve.”

“Sure, you’re welcome.”

“That girl was flirting with you,” Billy mumbles without opening his eyes. The left side of his face is mushed up into the seat.

“What? No, she wasn’t. We just have class together or something.” Steve looks over at Billy, genuinely confused. “She probably would’ve flirted with you, if you weren’t falling asleep.”

“Not tired,” Billy insists. “Just… here.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this relaxed.” Max pokes his cheek with the thought of teasing him, but he ducks his head and presses into her hand like a cat. “Uh, Billy?”

His eyes open halfway. He shifts to lean his temple against Steve’s seat. “What?”

“Um. Nothing. I guess.”

“I gotta smoke more. Harrington, do you have a guy out here? I had a guy in Cali.” He snorts at something he’s said. “Didn’t think anyone did out here, though.”

“Dean Clemons usually has some. I don’t know where he gets it,” Steve says. “He had a bunch at Tina’s. How’d you miss him? He had on that big stupid popcorn costume. Probably could’ve seen him from space.”

Billy hums mysteriously. “Bad idea.”

“What? Taking drugs from strangers? Didn’t stop you tonight.”

“Guess I have a lotta bad ideas,” Billy mumbles, laughing softly to himself.

Tammy skates back over with a tray balanced in her arms. She starts passing everything off to Steve through the window, saying, “Here’s the chocolate cake shake, the strawberry, the banana cream, and your fries. Careful, they’re hot! And um, here’s your receipt. If you wanted it.”

Steve drops it onto the dashboard, not noticing the phone number scribbled at the bottom. “Thanks again! Have a good night!”

Billy’s so distracted by his milkshake that he forgot he even ordered fries, so Max wastes no time tearing into them.

She stabs a red straw through the plastic lid of her cup. At Steve’s judge-y look, she says, “What? It’s fun to steal his food.”

Billy pops his own lid all the way off. He plucks out a few fries from the basket to dip them into his milkshake before eating them like that. _“Yes! Mmm…”_

Max sets the fries on the center console so he can reach them more easily. “Is it everything you wanted?”

“Yep. Thanks, Harrington.”

“Sure, Billy. Are you… dipping your fries?”

“Yeah, ’s good. Try it.” He shakes his cup at Steve. “Gimme yours.”

Steve laughs and trades off with him. He dunks a french fry, pops it in his mouth, and makes a thoughtful face. He holds it out to Max. “Salty _and_ sweet.”

Max tries it. “Weird. I like it.”

“What is this, banana? You got a banana milkshake?” Billy’s eyebrows say he’s not impressed, but he takes another long pull off the straw anyway.

“It’s _banana cream,”_ Steve corrects him, primly, laughing when Billy chokes and starts coughing. He trades back with Billy and stares at him wonderingly for a few long seconds while Billy’s looking away. He looks at Max, chewing the end of his straw. “You ever seen him like this?”

“No, but I guess it’s been a while.”

“Not since that day at your dad’s house,” Billy adds for clarification, then corrects himself. “Oh, wait. Nah, painkillers at the hospital. Those count?”

Max stuffs her face with french fries to miss Steve’s inquiring look.

“When were you in the hospital?”

Billy shrugs, grabbing more fries. “’Fore we moved.”

“Well… I mean, were you in an accident, or…?”

“Yeah, Harrington,” he muses. “Tripped and fell and bumped my head. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

Max’s stomach turns. She’s not going to say anything if Billy’s not going to, but she remembers how her dad’s eyes went all far away just thinking about what Neil did to him. How frail and sickly Billy looked in his hospital bed. How quickly he fell apart just from trying to tell her how it made him feel, months after the fact.

“Are you being sarcastic right now so it’ll count as a half-truth? ‘Cuz you _hate it_ when I do that to you.”

“’S not a half-truth. I’ll tell you all about it when I’m not fucked up, okay? Promise.”

“Fine. Pinky swear.”

Billy rolls his eyes, but he goes along with it anyway. “Pinky swear.”

Max gets halfway through her milkshake and pries the lid off to scoop out cake chunks with her straw. That Tammy girl’s got good taste. It’s just too bad she can’t have any way of knowing Steve’s not available for much more than just being looked at. It seemed obvious from where Max was sitting that he wasn’t interested, but people do go out of their way to believe whatever version of the truth they like best.

“What is that? Brownies?” Billy asks.

“Chocolate cake.” She holds it out for Billy to try.

He hums his approval. “Fuck yeah. Nice.”

She scrunches her nose at the pure concentration in his face. “Were you not paying attention when we ordered?”

“No, where are we?”

“Oh, my God, Billy,” Steve laughs. “I wish I had a camera.”

“Yeah, seriously.”

Billy slinks into the backseat with what’s left of the fries. He mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, _“Catch this ass, pretty boy.”_

Max shakes her head, but she can’t bring herself to look disapproving. Billy’s happy sometimes, now, but he’s never carefree like this. She hopes his dad’s not home to ruin it when Steve drops them off later.

Steve raises an eyebrow at her. “I guess… I mean, you know… about us. Right? ’Cuz you’d probably have questions if you didn’t.”

“I have questions,” she says, checking Billy in the mirror for a response — he’s too engrossed with his french fries to care about what they’re saying — before directing her attention back to Steve. “Doesn’t feel like it’s any of my business, though.”

“I’m — well, listen, I don’t go around talking about it.” He cuts himself off and hurriedly rolls his window up. Even then, he makes the extra effort to lower his voice. “Not on purpose, at least. But Nancy knows, and Dustin. They’re my friends and they care about what’s going on with me, so… and I’m just throwing this out there, but if you ever wanted to ask me anything — ”

“Did you ever date guys before Billy?” she asks, scooping up a chocolate cake chunk with her straw.

He straightens up a little, like he’s glad to have a single question to focus on. “No.”

“You ever wanted to?” Billy asks, slow, considering.

“Maybe I did. Never thought about trying for real, though.”

“So you and Tommy haven’t…?”

“Oh, come on, Billy. He’s been dating Carol since the eighth grade, and I don’t know if you noticed, but he’s kind of an asshole.”

“Tellin’ me assholes ain’t your type?” Billy muses idly, to some stammering from Steve. “Nah, you’re right. More of a flake than an asshole. Still thinks _you’re_ hot shit, much as he talks like he doesn’t.”

Steve twists around to pin Billy with an incredulous look. “What, are you jealous? _Of_ _Tommy?_ I don’t even talk to him anymore, Billy. Besides, I thought everybody decided you were the king now.”

_“King?”_

“Ugh, yeah,” Steve mutters. “It’s just a stupid thing people at our school decided was important.”

“Are you sure it’s not just because it’s actually important?” Max asks, trying not to laugh. “Because that sounds _totally legit_ and not like bullshit at all.”

Steve gestures to her with his hands. “It’s complete bullshit! It doesn’t mean anything!”

“But so wait, you’re telling me Billy’s a king now? Does he have subjects? Was there an election? Who decided to start calling him king?”

“He did a keg stand once,” Steve says. “It was pretty impressive, but still.”

“Billy, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you’re _royalty_. This is a big deal! We need to get you a crown and a scepter.”

Grinning, Steve adds, “And a red velvet cape.”

“You’re laughing, but I would look rad as fuck in a crown,” Billy says, perfectly deadpan. He turns to Steve and gestures at him with a single wilted french fry. “You wanna make me a cape, be my guest. You know damn well red’s my color.”

“No, yeah, you’re right.” Steve nods, but he’s smirking.

Billy’s mouth is starting to twitch into a smirk, too. “I’on’t give a fuck, Steve. Everybody likes velvet. You tryna tell me you don’t?”

“Nobody’s saying that, Billy,” he muses, chuckling. “Are you done with that?”

Billy gives him the empty basket and slaps the lid back on his cup before also handing that off, too. Steve holds his hands out to take Max’s trash and ambles out of the car to toss it.

“You knew I knew, right?” Max says, turning to catch Billy’s eyes.

“What, about Steve? Yeah, Max, there’s no getting anything past you.” Billy heaves a sigh. He looks a lot more normal now that he’s had something to eat. “’S not a big deal, right? I trust you.”

Max stares at him. He’s never said that to her before.

Not noticing that he’s said anything remarkable, he scoffs, muttering, “Roller Derby, though.”

She follows his eyes to where Steve’s been waylaid on his way back from the trashcan. She scoffs, too. “You’re not actually worried, are you?”

“Worried,” he echoes, rolling the word around in his mouth. “No. I don’t know, kind of. That’s not really it.”

“Then what?”

“You know how like…” He holds up his hands while he tries to find the words. “Like cats get — territorial ‘n throw down?”

Max opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. Billy doesn’t have a look about him like he’s going to get out of the car and try to start trouble with anyone, boy or girl, he just looks blurry around the edges and too perplexed to be properly jealous either way.

“You’re so weird.”

“Well, yeah,” he mumbles.

She rolls her eyes. “It’s okay. We like you anyway.”

“And I’m the one who’s weird?”

Steve crashes back into the car. “Jeez, wow. Okay, sorry.” He looks around for a second until he finds the receipt Tammy gave him. He crumples it in his fist and glances thoughtfully out his window. “Hey, Billy. Think fast.”

“What — ” The balled up receipt bounces off his chest. He blinks. “Dick.”

“Okay, where’re we going?” Steve starts the car and backs out of his parking space. “Am I taking you home? Back to your car? What?”

“My car,” Billy says, bending down to feel around by his feet. “’M leveling off. I can drive.”

“Why don’t you just let me? Will drives _Barb’s car_ , and he’s not that much taller than me.”

“Maybe you should ask Barb if you can drive her car then. _She wasn’t flirting with you, my ass, Harrington_. That’s why she gave you her number, I guess.” He flings it back at Steve, and just like before, Max can make out the numbers and the lopsided heart at the bottom.

“I didn’t ask her to! I was gonna throw it out the window, but she might’ve seen me do it. I don’t wanna hurt her feelings.”

_“Oh, I’m Steve Harrington, I’ve got a heart of gold, and I want everyone to be happy.”_

“ _I do_ want every — are you _messing_ with me?”

“Obviously.”

Max snorts and looks pointedly out the window.

“You know what, just for that, I’m not talking to Dean for you.”

“Aww…” Billy laughs, sounding weightless.

“Nope, you’re in trouble. We’re fighting.”

 _“Fighting?”_ Billy repeats gleefully, sitting up in his seat. “Now this I gotta see. You just say when and where you want me, babe, we’ll see what you got.” He turns to Max, even as Steve balks at him. “Your dad ever show you how to throw a punch?”

“No?”

“You wanna learn?”

Max sits up straighter. “Yeah!”

“I’ll teach you. Don’t let me forget.”

“Is that a good idea?” Steve asks, a little dubiously.

“What are you trying to say, that I can’t learn because I’m a girl?”

“What? No! Of course not!”

“Cool. We’ll start tomorrow.” Billy puts up his hand, and Max slaps it. He catches the side of her hand and holds on. “Don’t tell your dad.”

“I don’t think he’d mind,” Max says. “Why are you holding my hand?”

“What? Oh.” He lets go of her hand and squints at Steve. “ _Where_ are we going?”

“Your car, Billy.”

“Fuck that. Let’s just go back to yours. You don’t mind if we drop you off on the way, do you, Maxine?”

“I really don’t.”

Billy whacks Steve’s arm, grinning vibrantly. “See?”

“Your dad’s not gonna freak out?”

“To hell with him. I wanna go with you.”

Max drops her cheek into her hand and watches Steve’s eyebrows screw up high on his forehead. She waits for him to meet her eyes and gestures grandly at the backseat. “Are you sure you don’t wanna talk to that Dean guy? All this could be yours, all the time.”

Billy guffaws in the backseat, and Steve shakes his head. Even in the dark his face is red like a tomato. Max gets why he’s so flustered. Billy’s secretive on a good day, and he never relaxes like this where anybody can see him at it. She takes pity on both of them and turns on the radio. They get through a few songs by Fleetwood Mac before the house comes into view. She leans forward in her seat to see if Neil’s truck is parked outside, but it’s not.

“Hey, I’ll see you tomorrow? Guitar shopping?” Steve asks, peering around Billy where he’s already climbing over the center console into the front seat.

Max jumps out of the car and looks back at Steve. “Yeah, just send Dustin to come get me or whatever.”

“Night, Max,” Billy calls out, dropping into the seat with a huff. He catches his keys when she tosses them.

“Night, Billy.” She shuts the door and steps away from the car while they drive off. “Dorks.”

She heads inside and calls out just in case. When nobody answers, she gets the phone off the hook and takes it to her room, dialing on the walk over. Her dad’s a few hours behind them, so he’s probably awake. He answers on the fourth ring.

_“Hello?”_

“Hi, Dad.”

_“Max! Hey, how are you doing? Everything okay?”_

“Yeah, everything’s fine. Just wanted to hear your voice.”

_“Yeah? That’s all? No other reason?”_

“Well, Billy asked if he could teach me how to throw a punch. Can he?”

_“Oh, I guess it’s okay with me if it’s okay with your mom.”_

“I don’t want her to know,” Max tells him. She can hear him starting to disagree, so she beats him to it. “I don’t think Neil would like it if he saw us getting along all of a sudden. I cover for Billy kind of a lot — nothing bad, just. Like you did. With Gene.”

_“Max, I know where you’re coming from, and I know it feels like the right thing, but your mom deserves to know what’s going on with you.”_

“ _Well,_ _Neil_ _doesn’t!_ And she’ll tell him, Dad. Not to be mean or anything, but she will.”

_“Is that why you’re telling me? So you don’t have to keep it a secret from both of us?”_

“I don’t want to keep secrets from anyone, especially when it shouldn’t have to be secret in the first place. But it’s not for me.”

_“No, I know it’s not, baby.”_

“And Billy cares if you like him. I think he always did, but now he acts like he does.”

Dad hums thoughtfully. _“Yeah, you’re right about that. Okay, well, look, if you want him to teach you, then I don’t have a problem with it. You let him know he can call me anytime, too. I told him when he called last week, but I don’t think he believed me.”_

“Sounds like him.” She rolls her eyes. “I’ll remind him.”

_“Okay, good. Are you sure there wasn’t anything else on your mind, Max?”_

She sits on the edge of her bed and kicks her feet, the left, the right, the left again. She thinks about Steve’s usually empty house. Thinks of his parents, wherever they are, shaking hands and hopping on planes and signing paperwork in smoky rooms, whatever the hell adults do when they choose not to go home.

_“Max?”_

“I just miss you,” she admits, quiet, voice breaking a little bit. She wipes at her eyes.

_“I’m sorry, Max. I miss you, too. You know I think about you every day, don’t you?”_

“Yeah, I know.”

 _“Hey, you know what,”_ he says, evenly, the careful, calm tone he always gets when he knows she’s upset and he doesn’t want to make it worse. _“It’s funny you called. I just put something in the mail for you. You should be getting it here in the next week or so.”_

“You got me something? What is it?”

He laughs softly. _“I knew that would cheer you up. I can’t tell you what it is! That would ruin the surprise!”_

“But you already told me it’s coming,” she says, pulling her sleeve down over her wrist and drying her eyes. “I’ll still be excited.”

_“No, no, I’ve said too much already.”_

Max groans. “You’re no fun.”

_“But you feel better, don’t you? I can hear it in your voice.”_

“Yeah. I’m more glad I got to talk to you. I didn’t know if you’d be home.”

_“I’m around. I’ve got school until Christmas just about, and work’s been picking up, but I’m here most nights. If I’m not, the machine’ll get you. You can always call me, though.”_

“I know.”

_“You gonna be okay over there?”_

“Mmhmm. I’ll let you go. I know you’ve got… homework.”

_“All part of the process, baby. First step, degree. Second step, cushy desk job. We hope. I know that doesn’t sound all that glamorous, but you should see some of these textbooks I’m working with. Let’s see here… ‘Thermodynamics: Foundations and Applications,’ ‘Essentials of Hydraulic Fractures,’ uhh… well, ‘Engineering Mechanics for Structures.’ It’s… exciting stuff.”_

Max smiles. “Sounds like it.”

_“I can hear your amusement, and I’m choosing to take it as encouragement.”_

“Good. That’s how I mean it.”

Dad chuckles. _“I love you, baby.”_

“Love you, too. Good luck studying.”

_“Thank you. Have a good night, okay?”_

“I will. You, too.”

Max hangs up the phone and drops it into her lap, just watching it for a few seconds. She thinks about calling Lucas, realizes _duh,_ of course she can call him, and roots around in her bedside drawer for the radio Billy got her. The white noise crackles to life in her hands.

“Hello?” She tunes into the station everybody’s supposed to be on. There’s a moment of silence. She strains her ears listening to the white noise. “Anybody out there?”

_“Kingfisher?”_

A grin stretches across her face. “Hey, Henderson. I mean, Snowy Owl,” she amends seriously. “What’s the good word?”

_“Uh…well — oh! You went and saw Amadeus tonight, didn’t you? How was it? Did you like it?”_

“Yeah, it was awesome! You turned Steve into a total music nerd. I’m impressed.”

 _“That was all his doing, but I appreciate the compliment,”_ he says, sounding pleased as punch.

She climbs up onto her bed and sits criss cross applesauce. “So what else is there to do around here when there _aren’t_ mutant dogs and tentacle monsters terrorizing the town?”

 _“Birdwatching,”_ Lucas says.

Then Will, _“DnD.”_

And Mike: _“What do you mean, what else is there to do? Are monsters and demodogs not exciting enough for you?”_

 _“She handled it better than we did when we found out,”_ Lucas interjects. _“Besides, nobody actually wants to fight monsters. It’s like doing dishes, but way more harrowing.”_

All four of them keep arguing over the merits and shortcomings of fighting monsters, and Max smiles, listening along. She sets the radio down by her knee and flips open her notebook to doodle in the margin while their voices overlap in the tinny speakers.


	21. Let’s Do This Forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *nsfw content in this chapter, like. a lot. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)*
> 
> Beware the sexy

Steve gets them about halfway to his house before Billy can’t keep from touching him anymore. He plants his hand on Steve’s knee and digs in with his fingers like Steve’s thigh is ice cream on a sweltering summer day and Billy’s the scoop.

He tenses up, one hand shooting down to hinder Billy’s progress. “Somebody’s in rare form tonight. Jesus.”

“Who, me?” Billy croons, licking his teeth so his tongue’s showing when Steve glances his way.

“Oh, my God,” Steve mutters, but he squeezes Billy’s hand and doesn’t push it away. “What am I gonna do with you.”

“Fight me, for starters. Don’t think I forgot.”

“Billy, that’s not even how I meant it.”

“Uh huh. Consider it payback.”

“For what?” he asks, so genuinely perplexed — and what a cute fucking look that is on him, what an asshole — that Billy can’t help bearing down with his hand just a bit, climbing higher up Steve’s leg. _“Gah, Billy…”_

For all his protests, Steve’s still not pushing Billy away, and God, that does things to him. That he’s allowed to touch Steve like this, and that resisting him’s hard work just like it always is for Billy.

“Payback for wanting me to kick your ass on Halloween,” Billy murmurs, rolling his hand and laughing at the sound it pulls from the back of Steve’s throat. He loses the plot in what he’s calling Steve out for and adds, foolishly, “For walking outside in those stupid shades lookin’ like somethin’ out of a dream. Bad enough Clemons had to be there in those stupid-ass tiny shorts, but then you turn up and I know what you fuckin’ look like from the showers.”

There’s a stunned silence, and then, _“Dean? Are —_ what, that’s why you didn’t wanna bum weed off him? You thought you might…?”

“Bite him on the fucking mouth?” Billy asks, languid, looking over at Steve and that bewildered set to his face like he doesn’t know what to do with that jealous, _mine_ feeling he’s having. Billy knows all about that. “I’unno, maybe. Probably would’ve had better luck with him, actually.”

Now Steve does take Billy’s hand off his knee. “What does that mean?”

Billy squints at him. “Clemons didn’t have a girlfriend, Steve?”

Steve gets quiet, but the kind where he’s pressing his lips together to keep himself from saying anything. Billy’s never really been one to get twisted up when he’s high, but a bolt of uncertainty twists in his belly all the same. He drops his hands into his lap and looks out the window.

“He does have, like, really strong hands. Or whatever,” Steve says, quiet.

Billy drops a glance back in Steve’s direction, lingering and warm, considering. He hums in agreement. “Clumsy motherfucker, though. Doubt he knows what to do with ‘em.”

Steve snorts, looking sideways at Billy for a second before shifting his attention back to the road.

“Don’t know what you’re so worked up about,” Billy muses, slipping his hand back onto Steve’s knee where he’d always like for it to be. “Clemons sure as fuck never gave me his number with a little cartoon heart drawn underneath it.”

Groaning, Steve threads his fingers through Billy’s, so that his knuckles brush the denim of his jeans. “I don’t even like her that way.”

“I don’t like him that way either,” Billy echoes, easily, because it is easy. It’s the easiest thing there is. “And you know what, unlike fuckin’ Roller Derby, Clemons could not be less interested in my ass. What kinda bullshit, Steve, for real. I have it on good authority that my ass doesn’t fucking quit.”

“Oh, you do, huh?” Steve asks, shaking his head but grinning all the while.

“You’re goddamn right I do.”

Steve pulls up in the driveway outside his house and kills the engine, and it’s only then that Billy finally realizes he’s not going home tonight. Stupid, probably. He might catch a beating from his dad for disappearing and leaving Max on her own, and that sucks, but he couldn’t stand not being here with Steve for just as long as he possibly could be. Even bickering over shit that doesn’t matter and getting up in arms over — over what-ifs, pretty much — Billy’d rather be here.

Whatever hell it brings down on him later, he wouldn’t trade a peaceful night for one with Steve Harrington raising his heart rate in one way or another.

And anyway, most of the time he’s with Steve, barring the spare few apocalyptic events they’ve braved together, his nights are peaceful. It’s usually just after, when he has to go home, that the promise of safety and security lifts.

“Sorry, Billy,” Steve says, hushed, dropping his head back against the seat to look at him.

“For what?” Billy asks, thinking of Max and how she always makes him clarify what he’s sorry about.

“For being an asshole and getting jealous,” he answers readily enough. Then he looks away like he’s embarrassed. At least he doesn’t try to dislodge Billy’s hand from his again. “I do stupid shit when I get like that. Not as bad anymore, but… I don’t want to be like that with you.”

Billy holds his lip loosely between his teeth and presses his tongue to it while he thinks. He leans across the center console, catches Steve’s jaw in the softened scoop of his hand, and kisses him, gentle. Slow. “Me, too,” he mumbles, slipping his hand further back into Steve’s hair. “Is it fucked up if I’m kinda glad you’re workin’ on shit, too, and it’s not just my busted ass tryna get better?”

Steve chuckles, twisting sideways in his seat so he can kiss Billy more thoroughly. He waits until Billy’s gasping to inch back enough to add, “No, I know what you mean.”

“Rad.” Billy kisses him one more time, deep but close-mouthed so he won’t get distracted. “We’re still gonna throw down.”

“Ugh, Billy, come on!” Steve complains, even after Billy’s left the car and crossed the lawn.

“Told you!” Billy calls back, helping himself into the house. “Payback!”

He traipses ahead to the living room and kicks off his shoes once he gets there, then pushes the coffee table up against the wall so it’s out of the way. Steve’s slow to follow and just stares uncomprehendingly at Billy’s handiwork once he catches up to him.

“Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe the stuff you smoked had something else in it.”

“Nah, I’m good. Get over here.”

Steve crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Why? What are you up to?”

“Told you already,” Billy croons, tipping his head back. He raises his hand, palm up, and flicks his fingers beckoningly. “C’mon, I’ll go easy on you.”

“You’re high, Billy. I’m not gonna fight you.” His expression is fond but exasperated.

“Been hearing that a lot lately. Ever think maybe I need it?”

“Do I ever think maybe you need to get knocked around? No, I never think that.”

Billy shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it onto the coffee table. He grabs Steve’s face and kisses him full on the mouth until he starts to loosen up, then he leans away and slaps him lightly on the cheek. He’s close enough to hear Steve’s little gasp. Close enough to see his eyes go wide and dark.

“Hands up, pretty boy,” he whispers, backing away.

Steve raises his hands, bemused but not in a way that looks like he really wants Billy to quit, so Billy cuffs him gamely on the other side, laughing sharply when Steve tries to catch his hands but misses. When his guard is down, Billy taps another slap out on his cheek. Soft, teasing, more a caress than anything.

“Oh, you’re gonna get it,” he huffs, grinning.

“Yeah? Come give it to me then.”

Steve takes another halfhearted swipe at his face, and Billy sidesteps him easily before twisting Steve’s arm behind his back. He’s careful not to wrench Steve’s shoulder, but Steve’s less cautious about swaying backwards into him. Billy rolls with his momentum and sucks a bite into Steve’s neck. That touch stays light, too.

Billy bites him again, sucking a mark into his skin when Steve makes a decadent little sound and goes slack against him. Lips at his ear, Billy breathes out, “That all you got, baby?”

“I don’t wanna hurt you,” Steve sighs.

“You won’t,” Billy laughs, kissing his cheek and releasing his arm.

Steve stumbles, red in the face when he turns around to face Billy again. He’s all wide-eyed and breathless still, but he puts his hands up when Billy takes a step toward him.

“Say I’m comin’ at you from over here,” Billy starts, showing his hands so Steve’ll follow what he’s telling him. “You wanna block on the same side. You cross over with the other hand, you’re gonna be wide open. See?” Billy demonstrates, drawing Steve’s arm out into a parry and brushing his knuckles along Steve’s cheek. “Now tuck your chin. We’ll go full speed. Ready?”

“I liked it better when you were falling asleep,” Steve mumbles, cheeks gone splotchy with color.

Just for that, Billy comes at him from the left and slaps him again, barely just a graze of his fingertips.

_“Billy!”_ Steve charges at him then, _finally_ , adorable in his outburst. “That’s not even the side we practiced!”

Billy cackles and lets Steve barrel into him. It feels a lot like Halloween, grappling with him and digging his heels in hard so they don’t go anywhere unless Billy says so. The only difference now is Billy’s heart isn’t in his throat when he bites Steve on the fucking mouth. Steve makes a noise like cotton candy melting, and Billy’s still seeing stars when Steve slips away and slaps him, sharp and warm like an electric shock.

“Oh, God, was that — ”

_“Yeah,”_ he growls, grinning and stalking over to return the favor.

Steve parries like Billy taught him to do and catches Billy’s follow-up, fingers held firmly but not tightly around Billy’s wrist. He’s got Billy’s hand trapped down by his knee and a surprised, triumphant smile on his face. Billy darts his tongue out to wet his lips, and Steve’s eyes drop to follow.

Sweetly, over his thundering heartbeat, he says, “What’m I always tellin’ you, huh?”

Before Steve can come up with an answer, Billy pivots on his heel, plants his foot right at Steve’s instep, and drives his shoulder into the center of Steve’s chest, dumping him neatly onto the couch. He climbs on top of him and licks into his mouth. Steve shoves his hands up under Billy’s shirt and across his back. Billy does him one better and tears it off over his head.

_“Oh, plant my feet,”_ he laughs, bunching his fingers in Billy’s hair.

“You’ll get it,” Billy grunts, popping the button on Steve’s jeans and working the zipper down so he can slip his hand inside.

Steve groans and curves up into him. He fights with his own shirt for a second and pulls that off, too. Billy laughs, breathless, and catches Steve’s bottom lip between his teeth. He’s so warm and _so good_ , and he’s clutching after Billy like he never wants him to stop.

He twists sideways and sneaks his hands under Billy’s knees, already easing himself down to lie flat when Billy pushes him the rest of the way. Covering Steve like a blanket, surrounding himself on every side with his hands and his mouth and his soft, lingering looks — it’s almost as good as kissing him, _and God,_ they get to do both at the same time, hell yeah.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” Steve whispers, wrapping his arms around Billy’s neck to keep him where he is.

“You are,” Billy purrs, bracing his hand on the armrest over Steve’s head. He shifts his knees so Steve can tangle their legs together and presses in close again. “Been wanting to get my hands on you all night.”

“Is that why you kissed me outside the theater?” Steve asks, pulling on Billy’s hair until he lifts his head to look at him. “Or was that the joint talking?”

“Nah, I always wanna fucking kiss you.”

Steve grins, blushing a soft pink all over, and kisses Billy’s cheek. He turns into that touch, loving the feel of him, how he smells, the little sounds he makes. It’s so easy to just kiss Steve and keep on kissing him, to hold him and keep holding him. He tastes like cream and sugar still, but his mouth’s warm, warm. All of him is warm.

Billy sighs into his mouth. “I wanna look at you.”

The suggestion gets him blushing to the roots of his hair, but Steve lifts his hips so Billy can pull his jeans and underwear off in one motion. He balls everything up to toss onto the floor, and Steve stops Billy from eating him up like he wants to with socked toes pressed pointedly against his chest. Billy tugs those off, too, and tosses them the same way over the side of the couch.

Steve keeps his knees folded up over his chest to hide his nakedness, and goddamn, he has no idea what he looks like.

Billy shoves his own jeans down his thighs, teasing, “Not going shy on me now, are you?”

“Fuck you.”

“Oh, baby,” Billy muses, pushing off the back of the couch to get to his feet. He hooks his thumbs in the waistband of his boxer briefs and lets them puddle around his feet. “Do you promise?”

Steve pushes up on his elbows, throat bobbing around a swallow. His skin everywhere is pink, pink, pink, and Billy wants to touch him more than he can remember ever wanting anything. He steps one knee onto the couch, wraps his hands softly around each of Steve’s ankles, and pushes them apart. Steve lets him, eyes burning and hands reaching out for Billy, for whatever part of him he can get a hold of. His hand pulls at Billy’s shoulder, then the other at the back of his neck.

“C’mere,” Steve breathes, just before sinking his teeth into Billy’s bottom lip. He stays there a few seconds before licking into his mouth.

When he can breathe again, Billy grits out, “Said I wanted to look at you.”

“Who’s stopping you?” Steve whispers, laughter in his voice and on his lips.

“I wonder,” Billy murmurs, pushing up to test but not break the locked ring of Steve’s arms around his neck. “You got a sweet smile, you know that?”

Steve hazy, wide smile doesn’t falter for a second. He lays his head back and loosens his hold around Billy’s neck just enough to bunch his fingers in Billy’s hair, the picture of ease. “So do you.”

_“I do not.”_ Billy ducks his head to mouth at Steve’s Adam’s apple.

“You do,” Steve sighs. “Not all the time, but you do.”

Billy makes a gruff sound in the back of his throat and pinches Steve’s nipple. At the urgent sound Steve makes, Billy drops his head into his shoulder. He keeps rolling his thumb and first finger just to keep Steve squirming and gasping underneath him, and once his hand in Billy’s hair starts to pull, Billy lets off and drops his mouth to it instead.

He circles the other nipple with his thumb. Steve’s hands rove up and down Billy’s back like he’s trying to map out every muscle, bone, and ligament.

“Fuck, you feel good,” Billy mumbles, pressing his face into Steve’s sternum over his racing heart.

Steve huffs a laugh. His hand in Billy’s hair is soft, in sharp contrast to how quickly his chest is rising and falling. “Glad it’s not just me. Billy…”

“Hmm?” He slides his palm leisurely against Steve’s dick and squeezes.

_“Oh!”_

Billy presses his lips to Steve’s ribs, his stomach, his hip. “Remember what I said last time?”

“Uh, you said — _ah, holy shit!”_

_Close enough_ , Billy thinks, wrapping his lips around the tip, just for a taste. He settles in between Steve’s legs and grasps him in one hand, liking the feel of him, the pretty pink flush in his skin, the musky smell of him so close. Billy draws back enough to let a long string of saliva trail down Steve’s shaft and over his knuckles and moves his hand a few times, mesmerized at the sight of his hand closed around Steve’s dick, winding him up tighter and tighter.

“Yeah,” he says, getting his lips nice and wet. “Remember now?”

Steve gets half a word out before Billy’s on him, sinking down as far as he can to take all of him in one go. _“Oh, fuck! Billy! Don’t stop! Ahhhh, don’t stop…”_

He draws up a bit, catches Steve’s eye, and sinks back down, bobbing his head a few times and making a fucking mess. Billy pulls off of him and idly pumps his hand. Steve’s quaking, ragged already. He’s fucking beautiful.

“Good?”

Steve flops back and covers his face with his arm. Frantic, he gasps, “Yeah.”

“Want me to slow down?” Billy stops his hand but doesn’t take it away. “Hey, look at me.”

Steve drops his arms on either side of his head to finally stop pulling at his hair and locks eyes with Billy, a thin layer of sweat standing out on his skin. He sucks in a deep breath and slowly lets it out, shifting his hips so his legs can fall apart even wider. The hand by his head shifts, fingers slipping back into his hair to smooth it away from his forehead, gentle this time. Billy wants to fuck him. His skin’s hot all over wanting it.

He thinks Steve would even let him if he asked, if he opened him up for it good and slow and made him crazy wanting it. Fuck, but Billy doesn’t trust himself to be gentle right now, and he knows how it can feel if the one doing it isn’t gentle. Especially if it’s the first time.

Steve brushes his knuckles against Billy’s cheek, and Billy turns into that touch, eyes slipping closed.

The hand he never took off Steve’s dick squeezes tight, and Steve raises his hips into the circle of his fist, dropping his hand from Billy’s face to his hand, rooting him there.

_“Billy…”_ Steve trails off and moves Billy’s hand with his own. His whole body is one long bow of tension.

“Go on then,” Billy whispers, squeezing him on the upstroke.

He wanted Steve to come in his mouth, but he likes this, too. Likes the look of Steve’s shoulders digging into the couch and the tendons in his neck standing out when he comes hard and tosses his head back. Billy drags his fingers through the mess painting Steve’s flushed skin white and braces on his clean hand so he can sit up on his knees.

Steve hums and rubs a hand blearily over his face. “Wow.”

Billy laughs, whispering, “Steve.”

“Huh? What?”

“Bring your knees back up for me,” he murmurs, stomach flipping hard when Steve does what he tells him to.

The look on Steve’s face is dazed still but curious, excited. “Now who’s shy?” he whispers back, grinning so sleepily his eyes slip shut.

Billy’s heart squeezes in his chest, but Steve can’t see him, so he doesn’t try to hide it. He eases his hand between Steve’s legs, slicking him up in the same breath that he urges his knees up a little higher. “Think I want you like this ’cuz I’m shy, do you?”

“I don’t think you’re shy at all, Billy,” Steve croons, opening his eyes but only halfway. He starts to spread his legs again but stops when Billy catches him by the knees. He hums, confused, and lets Billy press his knees up toward his chin. “What’re you up to?”

He gets his dick between Steve’s thighs and sighs, letting that be his answer.

Steve’s mouth falls open around a surprised laugh. He winds his arm around his legs to keep them together and tucks his chin to watch, laughing again, winded. Another wave of color splashes up the column of his throat. “Oh, you’re really into this, huh?” he asks lightly, like he’s _not_ bent in half and breathless, carefully matching Billy’s pace and driving him crazy. “For a second, I thought…”

“What?” Billy croaks, clawing at the couch arm over Steve’s head.

“Thought you were…” He tenses all over and shifts his hold on his knees, shivering when something he does gets Billy’s pace to stutter. “…gonna fuck me, or something.”

A pulse of heat goes through Billy, fast and hot and relentless. He snakes his arm between Steve’s chest and his knees, drawing his legs out enough to drape them over his shoulder. He pushes against him harder, smirking at the look on Steve’s face. “You don’t like the way I fuck you, baby?”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Steve huffs, smiling and squeezing his legs together. He licks his lips and presses his shoulders back, pink-cheeked and sweaty. “Is this enough?”

Heart in his throat, Billy nods.

Steve nods, too, leisurely, thoughtfully. “You’re beautiful, Billy.”

Billy laughs, a desperate sound, high and staggered, mouth dropping open around a sigh. Much as he tries to come up with something bitchy to say, he can’t get his mouth to do anything more sophisticated than smearing kisses into Steve’s neck, his cheek, his smile. Steve shifts without warning, and Billy’s orgasm fucking cuts through him. He buries his face in Steve’s neck and doesn’t even try to be quiet about it. Steve wrings every last shock and flutter of warmth out of him until Billy unclenches the fist he’d made in his hair at the base of his skull.

Steve squirms to get his knees aligned with the fall of Billy’s body and parts them right down the middle. Billy’s not good for much else aside from just shifting an inch or two in any direction, just enough to give Steve enough room to bring his legs down. Once he’s done readjusting, Billy presses his forehead to Steve’s temple. His heart won’t stop pounding, but this isn’t a new problem when it comes to Steve.

He brushes Billy’s hair out of his eyes and says, “You really wanna kiss me all the time?”

Billy hums, hoping that’ll suffice for an answer until he can do words again.

Steve smiles, slow and sweet, and kisses Billy the same kinda way. Slow, sweet. Then he draws away to tell him, “You should then.”

Smirking, Billy fits their mouths together again. Figures that’s better than talking anyway since it’s what he’s working with while he’s waiting on his brain to come back from mush. Steve puts his hands just about everywhere on Billy that he can. Up his sides, down his back, over his arms, in his hair. God, he feels good. Warm and safe and perfect.

He pulls back to look down at himself and groans — obviously not a mind reader, “Gross. I need a shower.”

“In a minute,” Billy mumbles, leaning over the edge of the couch to feel around for their clothes.

“What’re you doing?” Steve asks, steadying Billy with his hands around his waist so he won’t tip over.

“Damage control,” he grits out. He stretches a ways further with a grunt and pops back up to wipe Steve down a little.

“Is that my shirt?”

“Gotta wear mine home,” Billy explains, tossing it back into the pile on the floor and pushing Steve to lie flat so he can tuck in next to him. He doesn’t want to think about going back to his dad at some point. He wants to have this a little while longer.

“Half of that was you, y’know,” Steve grumbles, wrapping an arm around Billy’s shoulders in spite of his protests. “Gonna have to start carrying a bandana everywhere I go.”

“Thought you did that anyway, for when they world’s ending or whatever.”

Steve makes a thoughtful noise. “Yeah, when we’re gearing up to fight demon dogs and shit.”

“Get another one then,” Billy says, walking his fingers along Steve’s ribs. “I ever catch you tryna get your spunk off me with the one that’s had fuckin’… monster guts all over it, I won’t touch your dick for a month. Swear to God, Steve.”

“I’d like to see you go a month without touching my dick,” Steve teases, laughing and pulling Billy closer when he makes like he means to escape.

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Okay, no, I wouldn’t.” Steve grins and lets Billy push up onto his arms to get some distance.

Billy gives him a sly smirk and flops heavily onto him, crushing all the air and a beleaguered whine out of his lungs. “What’s that, baby? Yeah, I have been watching my figure. Thanks for noticing.”

Steve squeaks out a pathetic little cough. “Bullshit! You’re huge!”

“What? Can’t hear you.”

“ _Guh_ , I said — ” Steve wriggles and topples Billy off and into the back of the couch so he’s only halfway draped over him. “Shut up, you’re jacked.”

Billy hums happily and goes back to skipping his fingertips along Steve’s ribs. He heaves a big sigh and edges his hand up to catch Billy’s last two fingers against his palm. Pleased to be caught, Billy seeks for him and taps the meat of his thumb until Steve laces their fingers together.

“Hey, tell me something.”

“Tell you what?”

“That night at Tina’s,” Steve starts, and doesn’t continue.

“What about it?” Billy looks at him, curious.

“Why didn’t you just kick my ass?”

He snorts. “Wouldn’t’ve been much of a fight. You were trashed.”

“Billy, I mean.” Steve gestures between them as much as he can with their hands linked and his other arm wrapped firmly around Billy’s shoulders. “It wouldn’t be a fight anyway. Even just messing around you got the jump on me.”

“Nah, I bet you’re scrappy as hell when it counts. Probably gave Byers a run for his money before he smashed your face up.”

“I didn’t,” Steve says plainly. “I really didn’t.”

“Shit, I dunno, Steve. What did you keep saying? Nobody was watching? Wouldn’t have mattered even if we had gotten into it.”

“Okay, so then you didn’t know?”

“Know what?” Billy shifts to lean on Steve’s chest and give him a look. “That you were gonna break up with Ms. Perfect and try to make it work with me instead?”

Steve raises his eyebrows at him. _“Try?”_

Billy rolls his eyes and hunkers down to get comfortable again. “Whatever.”

“ _Try_ to make it work with you!” Steve repeats, mock-aghast. “I’m a catch, Billy Hargrove. I’m _charming,_ I’m _considerate_ ,” Steve says, lifting his fingers off Billy’s shoulder to count his good qualities as he lists them. “I’m _sneaky._ ”

“You’re not,” Billy laughs, tugging his hand out of Steve’s to cover his face with it.

“I’m _handsome_.”

“Yeah.”

“I — thank you — I give you space when you need it.”

“You do, yeah.” Billy sucks a kiss into Steve’s collar bone and leans up to do it again at Steve’s throat. “You do.”

“Uhh, and I… mmm.”

“Uh huh?” Billy nips the hinge of his jaw.

Steve hums and gets a hand in Billy’s hair. “That’s not fair.”

“Don’t know what you mean,” Billy murmurs, pressing a kiss fast and hard to Steve’s slack, unsuspecting mouth just before he pushes off the couch to bounce up onto his feet. He scoops up the jumbled tangle of their clothes and tucks the whole mess under his arm. “Still want that shower?”

“No, Billy,” Steve groans, flopping back pretty dramatically for a guy with no clothes on.

Billy turns around and lets his hip jut out to one side. He gives Steve a slow once-over that has him scrambling to sit up. “You sure about that?”

Without waiting for a response, he heads upstairs, tosses their clothes vaguely at the open door to Steve’s room, and sets about getting the water running at a temperature he likes. The shower’s big enough that they don’t even have to touch if they don’t want to, but of course they want to, so they do. Steve twists around to pluck a bottle off the shower caddy, and as soon as he moves, Billy gets a face full of spray from the shower head.

Steve does a double a take and crows laughing. Billy tips his head back to catch some water in his mouth and fountains it at him in retribution.

“Jeez, okay!”

Billy shakes his head and steps out of the spray but has to stay put a second later for Steve’s hands in his hair. He rubs in a generous amount of shampoo that’s different from what Billy uses, lighter and sweeter, though he can’t place the smell.

“The fuck is this? Your mom’s shampoo?”

“Shut up, you love my hair.”

Billy closes his eyes to avoid the suds running down his face. “What is it? Honey?”

Steve pauses, rummages around for the bottle again, and goes right back to massaging the stuff into Billy’s scalp. He says, “Yeah, honey,” and then, warmer, with just a hint of a laugh to it, _“honey.”_

He huffs and sputters when some of it gets in his mouth. “Cool. Great.”

“Okay, keep your eyes closed.” Steve holds onto his arms and walks him under the spray again. He rubs vigorously at the bubbles on Billy’s head.

Billy swipes his hand over his face and blinks hard. “Am I good? Jesus.”

“Yeah, you’re good,” Steve muses, squeezing out some more shampoo onto his hand.

“Uh-uh, no, you don’t. Gimme that shit.”

Billy scrapes his fingers across Steve’s palm to get a lather going in his hand then works it into Steve’s scalp, thinking he’s gonna get revenge for the soap in his mouth, but Steve just looks happy as hell to have Billy’s hands in his hair.

“That feels awesome,” Steve sighs.

He tastes like soap when Billy kisses him, and he’s sudsy from the soap. Billy’s hands just glide over his skin, slippery and easy and sweet.

“ _Careful,_ shit,” Billy hisses out, catching Steve around the waist when he slips.

“Stop trying to knock me off my feet then,” Steve laughs, twisting away to stand under the spray. He scrubs the foam out of his hair and off his face then works up a lather from a bar of soap to wash with.

Billy leans back to give him room, and Steve washes him clean, too. It’s a nice feeling, Steve’s hands on his skin, taking off the day and the rest of the world so that it’s just them two. Just hands and skin and whispered promises, and it could be forever, couldn’t it? It could be like this all the time.

“Hey, Steve?” Billy breathes, dropping his head back against the tile.

Steve mouths at a spot high up on his neck and twists his hand. He’s sighing, too — into Billy’s pulse and his ear and his gasping mouth. He whispers, “Yeah, Billy?”

_Let’s do this forever,_ he thinks, and why not say it? Why not tell him when it’s the one thing inside of him that always feels this pure? A feeling breaks loose behind his ribs, glowing as it spreads. Laughing, Billy whispers back, “Let’s do this forever.”

Steve sighs against him. His smile’s a living thing against Billy’s skin. “Don’t go giving me ideas.”

“But this one’s a good one, Steve,” Billy wheedles, turning his head to mouth at Steve’s ear, then his cheek, then his grin.

“You’re high, Billy,” Steve reminds him.

He is and his dick’s in Steve’s hand and he’s full to spilling, and there’s too much, always, that needs to be said but never any of the right words to say it. He crushes Steve to him and keeps on spilling and spiraling and falling and flying, and then it’s Steve catching him around his back to keep him from slipping.

“Okay, we’re getting out now. You’re dangerous.”

“You never thought I was before,” Billy challenges, blinking water out of his eyes and probably looking just about the complete opposite of imposing.

Steve raises his eyebrows at him and wipes Billy down, rinsing his hands clean before shutting the water off. He helps Billy out of the shower and into a towel before moving away to brush the knots out of his hair. Billy sits on the edge of the bathtub and studies the smooth beige of the ceiling. Distantly, he becomes aware of Steve singing something to the mirror under his breath.

_“…lovers and friends I still can recall…”_

Billy must be staring because Steve accidentally locks eyes with him and trails off with a laugh. He walks over to give Billy the brush but holds onto it when Billy covers his hand instead of taking it.

“What is that?”

The tips of Steve’s ears flash red, and he shrugs, smiling. “Beatles. You’ve heard of ’em, right? They’re pretty popular.”

“Sing the rest.”

Steve snorts and gestures with the hairbrush. “Yeah? You like it?”

_I like you,_ begs to be spoken. It lives at the back of his throat like a sigh. _I like everything about you._

“Sounded good,” Billy mumbles.

“Just, sing the song?” Steve asks, raising his hand to move a twisted up lock of hair out of Billy’s face.

“Yeah, Steve. Just sing the song.”

“All right, where’d I stop? In my life I’ve loved them all… _But of all these friends and lovers / There is no one compares with you / And these memories lose their meaning / When I think of love as something new_ …”

Billy sits back and lets Steve brush his hair. He behaves himself through one full verse and the one that follows it, but then the towel around Steve’s waist catches his eye, and he can’t help tugging it loose. It drops around Steve’s feet, and Billy reaches for him.

“ _I know I’ll_ — ”

Steve drops the brush in favor of holding onto him, undoing all his hard work by sinking his fingers into Billy’s hair and clutching tight. Fresh out of the shower he tastes like the water they washed in and smells clean like the soap they rubbed into each other’s skin. Billy pulls off for a moment to kiss his hip and to make one thing clear.

“This time you come in my mouth.”

The groan that gets him, the frantic tension he feels in his scalp and at the back of his neck where Steve’s holding onto him, gets that tossing, fluttering feeling going in his stomach again.

“Whatever you want, Billy.”

_Forever_ , he thinks. _I want to do this forever._

He swallows Steve down to the root to keep himself from saying it a second time. To keep Steve from having to talk him off the ledge and to keep this moment for as long as he can. It feels good, making Steve feel good, rendering him helpless and holding him through it. Steve comes in his mouth not long after. He braces one hand on the wall so he won’t topple over when his knees give out.

“God, Billy.”

“Let’s get you to bed, huh?” Billy muses, thumbing at the edge of his mouth and darting his tongue out to catch the little bit that caught on his lip.

Steve gives him a look, dark and sweet, and hauls Billy up off the edge of the tub and out into the hallway. Once they’re in his room, Steve handily avoids their discarded clothes and passes up the dresser full of things they could slip into. Billy’s hair soaks the pillow case and his shoulders stick to the sheets, but that’s all secondary to the heat of his skin pressed along Steve’s. He wants this. For as long as Steve can stand to give it to him, Billy wants it.

“I want you,” he whispers, not having words Steve will believe that won’t crack his chest open. “I want you. I want you.”

“Have me then,” Steve whispers back, crashing into Billy without any thought of letting him go.

Billy takes his best shot at burrowing into him. He tucks his face into Steve’s neck and tangles their legs together, pawing at Steve’s back to get him still closer, closer.

Steve huffs a laugh against Billy’s ear, but he doesn’t try to wriggle loose. “You’re like a cat.”

“Shut up.”

He laughs again and rolls them over so he can spread out on top of Billy. “It’s cute. You’re cute.”

“’m not,” Billy grumbles.

“Oh, that’s right. You’re dangerous,” Steve croons, _giggling_ when Billy swats him. “I forgot, Billy Hargrove’s _dangerous_.”

“Maybe not to you,” he says, letting Steve pin him by the wrists.

With his hair wet and clinging to his face, Steve looks like he just got back from the beach, and isn’t that a thought. Lounging in the surf with Steve covering him, keeping him from floating away. It hasn’t been that long since he saw the ocean, but Billy misses it all the same. He misses the foam whipping off the waves in the wind, the rise and fall of the tide chasing the moon, the sand that dries to crumbling against bare skin in the hot sun.

Steve releases one of his wrists to brush his fingers over Billy’s forehead. “What are you thinking about?”

Billy closes his eyes and lets his shoulders sink back into the bed, buzzing, imagining it. He tells him, “You, me, the coast.”

“I’ve never been to the beach.”

“I’ll take you,” Billy murmurs, without opening his eyes or lifting his hand from where Steve pinned him even though he’s not holding him down anymore. “Head out west, teach you to surf.”

Steve brushes his lips over Billy’s cheek. “Sounds fun.”

Dreamily, Billy adds, “Three days in a car, gas station coffee, fuckin’… _McDonald’s._ Fuck, Steve, you guys don’t have a McDonald’s out here. What the fuck?”

“Give it a few years.”

_“Years?”_ Billy groans. “God. You’re not gonna go outta state for college?”

Steve hums and settles in with his arms folded over Billy’s chest. “Probably not. You know my grades aren’t the best.”

Billy’d forgotten about all that red ink on Steve’s assignments, filling up the margins like candy in a dish. His eyes drift open, chest tightening at the realization of what he’s said, how he talked Steve into a corner without knowing that’s where they were headed, but Steve just shrugs like he can hear Billy working himself up toward an apology of some sort.

His smile, smaller now, is just as genuine as it has been. He muses, “I’m all right with staying. I’d be cool with going, too, though. It doesn’t make a difference to me.”

They’ve never talked about what comes next. Why would they? Steve’s sweet on him, and Billy feels a similar kind of way back, but it’s not like they’ve exchanged fuckin’ promise rings or anything. Six months ago, Billy’s plan, if it could be called that, was to get a job by the beach and move out as soon as he could make it on his own.

He’d tried leaving once when he was thirteen, but cops picked him up as a runaway and took him right back to his dad, and wasn’t that a familiar picture. Neil Hargrove’s misfit kid walking out on him, only to be dragged back kicking and screaming.

Like mother, like son. The beating he caught for running hadn’t given him much hope for pulling a second attempt.

He never even thought about college until Ms. Carter put the idea in his head, and however ridiculous it sounded at first, it feels more and more practical every day that it sits with him. How else is he going to get away from his dad, or out of this small town he’d been dropped into like an organ transplant gone bad? He’d been so sure this place would be hell on earth for him — mainly because his dad assured him it would be — but it’s actually been… _kinder_ to him than California ever was.

Billy pushes his hand into Steve’s wet hair and stares at him. Steve turns to kiss his wrist, and heat blooms in Billy’s chest. Nothing about being with him feels wrong.

And Billy’s felt wrong most of his life, but with Steve, he just feels right. Calm and happy _and_ _seen_.

“You okay?” Steve asks, laughing and shifting until he can lie next to Billy, only half on top of him.

“’M good.”

“Sounds like bullshit.”

“It’s not,” Billy sighs, pouting, even as his eyes droop closed. “Just — I never feel like this.”

Steve goes quiet. Only his weight and warmth anchor Billy to the bed. He wraps Billy’s hand up in both of his and drops a kiss to his shoulder. His words, if they’re there, whatever they may be, must take some issue with being said right this moment.

Usually Billy can relate, but he’s finding it much easier to pull speech from the well of his thoughts. Pot’s always been awesome for loosening up his secrets.

That’s what they are, him and Steve. They’re a secret, to keep them safe. But what does that matter, if Billy can’t share how he feels with him? What are they a secret for, if what they’re protecting isn’t real and deep and honest?

“I like being with you,” he says, whispering it, letting Steve in on something sacred, something to be kept and above all else, known. “And you know what else?”

Steve whispers back, more treasure passing between them. “What, Billy?”

“I’m scared,” Billy laughs, and he knows he’d be crying if he wasn’t still floating like a goddamn moron. “I’m really fucking scared.”

“You don’t have to be.”

Something about the strain in his voice, like magic, helps Billy open his eyes. He’s not crying either, but the redness in his eyes says he might if Billy doesn’t cut it out. He smiles and turns onto his side to look right at Steve, folding an arm under his head so the pillow won’t muffle his one good ear. For a few seconds he just watches Steve’s face, his wide brown eyes and his soft pink mouth. Billy can’t even remember how many times he’s kissed that mouth, felt it warm into a smile or a laugh right there against his lips.

“Still picked you, didn’t I? I’ll keep picking you, too. ’M fuckin’ hardheaded.”

Steve huffs a laugh and shakes his head. His eyes are so goddamn sweet and tender and _pointed at_ _Billy_. Nowhere else. He says, “Lucky me.”

“Hey, you had your chance to cut and run,” Billy mumbles, letting his eyes fall closed again. “You picked me, too.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Maybe we deserve each other,” Billy sighs, snuffling and throwing an arm vaguely around Steve’s waist. “We’re both dumbasses.”

“Oh, please, I know Ms. Carter thinks you’re a genius,” Steve huffs back, winding an arm around Billy’s back and pulling him in close to kiss him soundly.

“There’s more than one way to be stupid, Steve.”

“Then there’s more than one way to be smart. Go to sleep, Billy.”

Billy drifts off before he can come up with a reply and slips in and out of a dream about his mom. It’s mostly shapes and colors and feelings, but he remembers her arms wrapped tight around him and her hair tickling his ear. He wakes with gentle fingers kneading at his scalp and an echo of her voice filling his head like the sun fills the sky.

He opens his eyes and lets them slip shut a second later, mumbling, “Harrington.”

“Hey, Billy. How’d you sleep?”

“Good.” He shifts his shoulders and stretches, kicking the sheet down around his calves where it tangles up in his feet. “C’mere.”

Steve laughs and lets Billy haul him closer. He’s naked as the day he was born and grinning. He croons, “You have morning breath.”

“You’re no fucking peach either,” Billy teases back, meaning it about as much as Steve does.

He hums and kisses the corner of Billy’s mouth. “Guess that’s why you always wanna kiss me, huh?”

Billy freezes, caught, and the memory of last night trickles in: the teacher’s girlfriend, sitting in the car with Max, going with Steve to get milkshakes, coming back here after. All that sappy shit he said — _that he meant —_ and now Steve knows.

“Oh, shit.”

Steve laughs, soft and low. “It was sweet. You’re sweet. _And very cute_.”

_“No,”_ Billy moans, covering his face with his hands. _“Ugh.”_

“Does that mean you remember, or do you need me to fill in some of the blanks?” Steve asks, and he’s smiling with his cheek in his hand when Billy scowls at him.

He groans and struggles out from under him and off the bed. He flees into the bathroom, dropping his back against the door as soon as it shuts behind him. His hair is a goddamn mess, but he tries to save it anyway. He’s still trying when Steve knocks on the door a few minutes later.

“Yeah, what?”

Steve cracks the door open. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Billy mutters, watching his face turn red in the mirror. He rolls his eyes at himself. He knows when he’s being an asshole.

“Sounds like bullshit,” Steve counters, mild, and eases the door open when Billy doesn’t stop him.

Billy rubs a hand down his face, still on fire. He shakes his head. “Sorry.”

Steve pushes off the doorframe to stand behind him at the mirror. “It’s okay. Guess I’d be weirded out, too, if I said a lot of really sweet shit to you while high off my ass.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Billy scoffs, feeling warmer at the thought.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Steve flashes a grin at him in the mirror. He wraps his arms around Billy’s middle, and Billy notices then that he pulled on a pair of sweatpants before following Billy into the bathroom. “I can say some sweet stuff to you now? Even the score a bit. Let’s see… oh, last night, when you got all worked up about Tammy Thompson giving me her number — ”

“Oh, now he knows her name.”

“Shut up,” he laughs, leaning in close to drop his chin onto Billy’s shoulder. “I didn’t even notice her, Billy, and I’m — that sounds kind of harsh when I say it like that, but how could I when I’ve got you on my mind all the time?”

Billy tips his head back, leaning into him. “All the time?”

Steve buries a laugh in the frizzy travesty that is Billy’s hair. “Yeah, asshole, you’re in good company. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

That he knows that’s why Billy’s all twisted up really should upset him more, but it has the opposite effect. It’s calming, almost, to be held in place while the bad feeling ebbs out of him, to watch Steve, albeit clumsily, try to meet him where he is. Billy lifts one hand to Steve’s, covering him, holding him where he is, where they are, together.

“Even that night, at Tina’s, I couldn’t stop staring at you,” Steve says, quieter, more like he’s saying the words as he’s thinking them, with no concern for how they sound. “I knew I shouldn’t because — I mean, _because_ _I shouldn’t have been_ , y’know? I shouldn’t have even been there, but… then you came right up to me and I couldn’t look away, and I didn’t want to.”

“You really never thought about it before? With a guy?” Billy asks, not skeptical, exactly, just wondering.

“No? I don’t think so. Well, no, that’s not — I’ve… _looked_ , sometimes? But I just felt like I could ignore it, and it wouldn’t matter because there’d always be girls. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Billy tells him. He’d tried to convince himself there’d always be girls, too, but the rules that apply to Steve aren’t really the same for him.

“So then you’ve — like, _you’ve_ dated girls, right? I mean, you told me you used to, and I know you and Katie weren’t ever actually dating, but I saw her slap Wyatt Fitzgerald for calling you a psycho a few weeks back in Mr. Scofield’s class. It was awesome.”

Billy shrugs, less interested in this part of the conversation. “She’s all right.”

“Not your type?”

“Nah, more my dad’s,” Billy murmurs, not wanting Steve to pull at this thread. “Wyatt Fitzgerald, huh? He give her any trouble?”

“No, but he’s got a very punchable face. Don’t you have Shop with him?”

He hums, thinking. “Serious-lookin’ guy with a crew cut?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

Billy purses his lips together and gives Steve a suspicious look. “He does have a punchable face. Never noticed.”

Steve snorts and cracks a smile. “Hey, while we’re here, can I fix your hair?”

Billy gives him a weak glare in the mirror, but judging by Steve’s wide smile he knows before Billy does that he’s gonna say yes.

“Fine, but I’m putting my damn clothes on.”

“Why? You look great.”

“Fuck you, I’m walkin’ around dick swingin’ and you’ve got fuckin’ pants on.”

“I can take ’em off.”

“No way. I gotta get going. My dad’s probably pissed as it is.”

Billy stomps back into Steve’s room and pulls on his jeans and then his shirt. It gapes open almost to his stomach. The first button Billy thought to do up is fuckin’ MIA, and the one below it is hanging by a thread. “Shit.”

“Problem?” Steve pokes his head into the room and laughs when Billy turns around. “Oh, whoops.”

“Whoops? Really? That’s all you have to say for yourself?”

“You were there, you helped,” Steve reminds him, smirking and making his way toward the closet. “Why don’t you just borrow something of mine?”

“No, I can’t. My dad’s gonna know.”

He tries tucking the shirt into his jeans, but that just draws more attention to the problem. He yanks it out and fumbles at the remaining buttons to work them open, but his shaking hands won’t cooperate. It’s gonna be like last summer all over again. His dad’s gonna take one look at him and know who Billy’s been kissing, and then he really won’t stop. Billy’ll lose everything all over again.

It was already too much the last time. He can’t go through it again.

“Billy, hey. _Hey_.” Steve catches his wrists. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Billy shakes his head and forces his jaw to relax. He can’t look at Steve, not yet, not until he figures out how to breathe again.

“Okay, it’s okay. Why don’t you just let me fix it for you then?” He gives a shaky laugh at Billy’s skeptical expression. “Yeah, babe, Home Ec. We don’t just bake cakes all the time. I mean, I signed up to bake cakes all the time, don’t get me wrong, but I can fix a button. Unless you’re — _going_ for Fabio, with the whole…”

Billy tries a laugh, too, and it doesn’t cut him. “Fabio?”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t say it was a bad thing,” Steve purrs, obviously playing, and Billy has to laugh again.

He bites his lip, feels his face wanting to crumple, but he can’t let it. Or he could, probably, but for what? Something that happened months ago that Steve doesn’t even know about? Something that’s _been_ _happening_ his whole life? And why is it so hard to put into words? It should be easy, as straightforward as the act, but his heart’s beating so fast, and putting his finger on why is anything but straightforward.

“Here, take this off for me.”

Billy uncoils his shoulders and lets his shirt slide down to hang off one hand. “You can really fix it?”

“Yeah, sure. It’ll just take a minute.”

Steve drapes it over his arm and riffles around in his dresser for a little sewing kit. He waves for Billy to come sit with him on the bed and unspools a bit of red thread to work with before snipping the loose button free. Billy watches him set the button and fasten it in place with neat passes of thread. The pin keeping space through the four button holes doesn’t budge one bit.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Steve asks, gently, without looking up.

That should be straightforward, too, because Billy does want to talk about it, but he can’t. Steve takes his silence in stride and nods, knotting up his thread and wiggling the pin free. He tweaks the button a bit to check for mobility. Good as new.

“Gotta grab another button,” Steve tells him, already bouncing back to his feet. “Hang on.”

Billy reels the shirt into his lap and rubs a thumb over the dangling thread where the remaining button’s missing. His other hand migrates up to his ear, feeling the split in his skin where Gene’s earring used to be. He doesn’t even know why at first, but then the trajectory of his thinking shifts, and he feels it right in the center of him.

“Did you ever learn to sew?” Steve asks, walking back into the room. “It’s not as hard as it looks.”

“No,” Billy murmurs, dropping his hands back into his lap and surrendering the shirt when Steve goes to take it back. “Doesn’t look hard at all when you do it.”

Steve beams, pleased. “Thanks. Can I still fix your hair after this? There’s something I wanna try.”

Billy nods, still not quite looking at him, an apology sitting on the tip of his tongue. He flicks two fingers at his thumb, heart racing. “Wasn’t you.”

“What wasn’t?” Steve looks up at him, unassuming, sweet.

“Earlier, when… wasn’t anything you did.”

“I didn’t think it was, but thanks.” He flashes a quick smile at Billy and threads up the second button as easily as he did the first one. “Okay, all better. See? What’d I tell you? Home Ec.”

“Next time I want a cake,” Billy muses, smirking and blushing — _ugh_ — and shrugging his shirt back on.

Steve perks up. “What kind? Pound cake? Apple cake? Coffee cake?”

“Thought you said you didn’t even make cakes all that much.”

“Not as many as I thought,” Steve concedes, more than a little dejected, but then, brightening, “I did find this old cookbook in the garage, though. It’s got all these recipes in it for cake and pie and fudge. I’ll show you later. Come let me fix your hair.”

Steve grabs his hand and leads him back into the bathroom. He putters around grabbing a spray bottle from under the sink and a thick canister of hairspray from the medicine cabinet. He puts the lid down on the toilet seat and gestures for Billy to sit.

“What do you normally put in your hair anyway? Besides hairspray.”

“Uh, Pantene?”

“Just?” Steve gives him a look and then starts it on him with the spray bottle. Wistfully, he continues, “Well, you’ve got the raw materials at least. Look at all this hair, jeez. Stick with me, Billy. I’ll fix you up.”

He hums, closing his eyes against the mist hitting his face. He expects it to hurt when Steve comes at him with the hairbrush, but he starts from the ends and works his way up so the knots don’t yank. Steve takes a long time brushing Billy’s hair out, and only when it’s damp and he can run his fingers through it does he trade the brush for the hairspray. Billy cracks an eye open to look at it and gets an eyeful of Farrah Fawcett’s pearly whites.

“Guess I know why you got beef with generic.”

Steve snorts and gives him a few liberal passes with the hairspray. Billy holds his breath and closes his eyes. He knows the drill. Steve fluffs his hair a few times, sprays, and repeats the process. Billy listens for the light tap of Steve setting the hairspray down before he risks opening his eyes, and then the hairbrush makes a reappearance.

“If I look as stupid as I feel when you’re done, I’m sticking my head under the sink.”

“That’s fair,” Steve murmurs absently. He drops a flirtatious smile Billy’s way and tops it off with a wink. “You don’t, by the way, but I’m not done with you yet.”

Billy’s stupid. He’s so stupid. Steve _would_ say something like that to him, and mean it the way Billy wants him to mean it, but that doesn’t mean he should automatically hear it that way, and it definitely doesn’t mean he should feel warm and dizzy believing it, believing Steve. Stupid.

Steve sprays him a few more times, hones in on a spot near Billy’s face, and twists a lock of hair around his finger. He sprays that, gives it a tug, and smiles when it bounces. The look he gives Billy then, lingering and surprised, makes Billy feel warm, too, but not stupid. Just clear-headed, even-footed, like he can breathe after — after such a long time spent gasping for air.

He wraps his arms around Steve’s back and presses his face into his stomach. Steve twists around, the hairspray clicking when he sets it down on a nearby shelf. His hands are warm on Billy’s shoulders and warmer still smoothing down his back. He smells like sleep and sunbeams.

“Is this you trying to get out of looking in the mirror?” Steve teases, running his hands back up and curling one around the back of Billy’s neck.

Billy drops his head back, chin planted on Steve’s belly beneath his ribs. “’S just me holdin’ onto you.”

Steve brushes his knuckles against Billy’s cheek, eyes gleaming, and asks, in a sugary kind of voice Billy suspects he isn’t meant to like as much as he does, “Do you always wanna hold onto me?”

Billy tightens his grip and buries his face one more time in Steve’s stomach. He works a hand under Steve’s shirt to palm his ribs. Admitting it makes his face hot, but he says it. Whispers, “Yeah, I do.”

_Let’s do this forever,_ he thinks, closing his eyes.

Steve combs his fingers through Billy’s hair from the base of his neck and out to the ends. He’s got no idea what Billy feels for him, and how could he? All that shit Billy told him last night doesn’t even begin to cover it. They can play it off for a joke all they want, but it’s out there now, and it’s the truth.

“Are you sure you have to go home, Billy?”

“Yeah,” he sighs, eyebrows pulling down right as his shoulders start to come up.

“Why?”

_Because it’s gonna be a fight if I don’t,_ he doesn’t say.

“Just stay till tomorrow.”

Billy sits back, arms still circling Steve’s waist but loosening. That shivering, crying feeling creeps up on him again, heavy with yearning, and he smothers it. He makes himself smile instead. “Not sick of me yet, Stevie?”

“No,” Steve answers soberly, but there’s a hint of a smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth. “Are you asking ’cuz you’re sick of me?”

“Nah, but I still gotta go.”

Steve presses his lips together and doesn’t say whatever he’s thinking. He settles for adjusting Billy’s hair one more time and steps away, making Billy miss the heat of him immediately. A pointed glance from him to the mirror reminds him to go check his hair.

Billy doesn’t know what he expected. Big soup can curls, maybe, like Farrah Fawcett, but it’s distinctly _King Steve_ , not unlike a pompadour right at his hairline and curling out the more that it dries. The one bit Steve set apart from the rest falls out over his temple in a single curl. He looks good. His dad might kick his ass when he sees, but Billy likes it, and this stuff Steve used isn’t crunchy like the shit Billy has at home.

“So what do you think?”

“Might have to steal her away from you,” Billy jokes, making eyes at the tiny smiling portrait on the hairspray canister. He holds his hand up when Steve makes like he’s gonna give it to him. His dad really will kick his ass if he finds that shit in his room. “Not actually, Steve.”

He shrugs. “I have more.”

“Yeah, ’course you do.” Billy pats down his pockets and finds his keys. “You mind dropping me off at my car?”

“No, I’ll just get dressed real quick, and then we can go.”

Billy follows him out into the hall and waits in the doorway while Steve rummages around for clothes. He doesn’t try to hide from Billy at all while he’s getting dressed, and that warms Billy up, too. Seeing Steve hop around on one foot to get his socks on, his bed unmade after they slept in it together, makes him feel good. More than good. Right.

“I’ll be downstairs,” Billy says, and turns to go so he won’t have to stand there carrying that tightening feeling in his chest.

He forgot his watch on his nightstand before he took Max with him to meet Steve last night, so he doesn’t know what time it is. He just knows he’s late. Even without a functional curfew to work off of, as far as his dad’s concerned, Billy might as well always be running fifteen minutes late.

At the first floor landing he looks around for his shoes. He sees Steve’s tucked up by the front door and backtracks to the living room. They’re where he left them by the coffee table, and the coffee table is where he left it, too, pushed up against the wall between the two armchairs. Billy drags it back over by the couch, remembers how they’d fallen into it and each other, and sets about tying the laces on his boots.

The living room’s no worse for wear, but Billy’s never gonna be able to look at this couch again without seeing what they got up to on it. Steve comes down a minute later, dressed and swinging his car keys around on one finger. His eyes linger on the couch, too, and color comes up in his cheeks.

He clears his throat to ask, “You really don’t wanna stay? You can just come with us to look at guitars and stuff.”

Billy forgot they said they were going to do that today. He stares hard at his laces, and before he manages to tie them up, Steve crouches in front of him, close enough to touch but not. Billy keeps at his laces, and Steve lets him because sure enough, if there’s anything Steve Harrington’s proven he can do, it’s wait out Billy’s mood swings.

Just trying to give Steve an answer approaching the truth makes his eyes sting. He feels small and powerless trying to swallow it down. Pathetic.

Feeling like he’s gagging on fumes, he says, “I can’t.”

“Come on, why not? We went to the movies and got milkshakes and — ” Steve awkwardly pats the couch by Billy’s leg, still not touching him. He chuckles, soft, sweet, and not getting it for all that Billy can see him really trying to understand. “We’ve had a pretty normal run of it so far, and no one knew, right? Who’s gonna, if we just keep at it? Especially with Dustin and Max there, who would even think we weren’t just friends?”

God, that’s worse.

It’s not what Billy wants, even though he knows it’s exactly what he asked for and the only way they can have this — _have anything_ — at all. He turns his face away, knowing and hating that moment when the heat behind his eyes starts to get unbearable. It’s not fair. He presses his lips together, finally having to blink when the tears drop.

“Billy?” Steve reaches for him then, and Billy can’t.

He catches Steve’s wrists, featherlight, barely putting any kind of pressure on him at all, and doesn’t look at him. “Don’t.”

Steve props his chin on Billy’s thigh. He doesn’t try to twist free. “What’s wrong?”

Billy presses both Steve’s wrists into his lap with one hand and rubs at his eyes with the other. He sniffs once loudly. Cat’s out of the bag. Might as well own it. “Nothing.”

“You’re crying.”

“Yeah,” Billy says, wiping his face again for whatever good that’ll do. He catches Steve’s jaw and kisses him, for whatever good that’ll do.

“I don’t understand. What did I do?”

“You took care of me,” he whispers, shocked at himself and how much it hurts to say it out loud. Why does it hurt? Is it supposed to? “And I can’t give you shit, Steve.”

“What do you mean? Like out there? Billy, we can’t.”

“I know we can’t!” Billy stares at him, feeling that old heat rise in him like a weapon, wanting _so badly_ for it to be a weapon, but it’s not. It’s his heart in his hands, pumping out blood. Like trying to hold the entire ocean only for it to slip through the cracks in his fingers. Quieter, he says, “I know we can’t. I just…” He trails off and buries his face in his hands. “I’m sorry.”

“Billy,” Steve sighs, climbing up onto the couch next to him. He slips an arm around his back, coaxing Billy to crash into him, and he does. “You don’t need to apologize for that. It’s not your fault.”

“Really? It’s not my fault you gotta hide? Or fucking lie about this?”

“Lie about what?” Steve asks, serene, leaning back into the couch with Billy tipped into his shoulder. “We protect each other, Billy, and it’s not for anyone else anyway. It’s ours. I picked you, remember? And I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I’m not kicking you out, okay? I’m asking you to stay. Will you?”

Billy sighs, hands covering his face. He feels wrung out. Steve tucks his hair behind his ear but doesn’t try to tilt Billy’s face toward him.

“If you really, really want me to take you home or to your car or wherever, then I will, but if that’s not what you want, y’know, if… if what you actually want is to stay, then can you just stay? Because every time I’ve ever let you walk away from me, I regretted it.”

“What?” Billy grumbles, wiping at the tear tracks on his face. “But you’re the one who always — ”

Steve nearly smiles, but he’s obviously exasperated. “I’m the one who always what? Leaves? No, I’m not, Billy.”

_No, that’s not right,_ Billy thinks. _You leave, you always leave —_

Except… no, he doesn’t, does he?

Both times they were along together on Halloween, the night with the dogs and the morning after, trying to get himself sent home now when it’s obvious he doesn’t want to go. Billy doesn’t know how he convinced himself Steve’s the one who’s been ditching him all this time when it’s never him feeling cornered or panicked. Never him getting his back up about running when he could take that time to try and understand why the urge to take off even presented itself in the first place.

Billy finally looks up at Steve, at his loose and relaxed expression. “You wanna keep me, huh?” he asks, hating himself for how much he wants it to be true.

“I do. So how ‘bout it? You wanna be kept?”

Billy’s gonna ask Steve how he does that someday. How he just says whatever the fuck is real and true to him at any given moment, and how he never, ever looks worried about the fallout. Does he even know how fucking fearless he is?

“Yeah, Steve.” Whispering’s the best he can do, but he says it, and that’s what counts.

Steve combs his fingers through Billy’s hair. It feels nice against the fucking headache Billy just gave himself. He closes his eyes, exhausted.

“You give me plenty, by the way,” Steve tells him, whimsical about it, conversational. “You gotta go easier on yourself, man. You’re doing your best.”

“My best sucks.”

Steve sighs and grips a fistful of Billy’s hair, not hard. Not hurting him, never that. He says, “I’m gonna see if I can get Max on the radio. Sit tight, okay?”

That he can ask Billy that without a shred of irony in his voice is actually amazing. Billy hasn’t earned that from him, as shitty as his track record for sitting still is, but he gives it a shot. He curls up on his side where Steve left him, taking up the corner and part of the middle cushion. There’s enough space for Steve on the far end if he wants it, after Billy cried all over him like a big fucking baby.

He gets a few minutes of silence before he hears Steve’s voice getting closer:

“No, yeah, he’s here. Everything’s fine. Did you want to talk to him?”

_“Just tell him he owes me for cancelling guitar shopping,”_ Max intones across a crackly connection.

Steve laughs and catches Billy’s eye. “Got it. Any fancy requests? I think you should take him for all he’s got.”

_“Steve, that’s surprisingly cutthroat of you,”_ crows Henderson. _“I approve.”_

_“I’ll think about it. Thanks, Steve.”_

Billy doesn’t try to get the radio from him when Steve collapses the antenna, and he doesn’t fight him when he wriggles in next to him on the middle cushion. He just makes room, twisting around to lie on his back with his head in Steve’s lap. It’s what Steve wants him to do, and Billy would want to do it all on his own even if Steve wasn’t making it so easy on him. His hand finds their way into Billy’s hair again.

“Max said she covered for you, by the way.”

“Didn’t ask her to.”

“I know,” Steve murmurs.

“Didn’t ask you for this either.”

“I know,” Steve says again, never once stilling his hands.

“You shouldn’t have to do all this. Why would you?”

“Probably for the same reason she does, even when you don’t ask.”

Billy clenches his jaw so hard his back teeth ache. He huffs an agitated breath and turns his head, trying to hide his trembling lip and the tears that haven’t really stopped.

Bewildered, Steve tells him, “It’s okay, Billy.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Why not?” Steve asks him, gently, still just running his fingers through his hair.

_Because I’m fucked up,_ he thinks. _Because all I do is wreck shit. Because I need you, but you don’t need me at all._

But he hears without needing Steve to tell him that that’s not fair.

He tries to remember what he said last night, when words were easier and saying them didn’t cost so much. There’s an ache in the back of his throat at trying to bring them to the surface. “I wish I could give you more than this,” he starts, mouthing it more than he is saying it. He turns his face to the ceiling, grimacing when that puts him back in Steve’s line of sight.

Steve blinks at him, still trying his best to understand. His hands finally stop pushing through Billy’s hair, one of them coming down to rest over his heart. He murmurs, “You could be kinder to yourself. Can you give me that?”

Billy didn’t go into this thinking there was a right answer or even one that he’d want to hear, but he should’ve known Steve would know just what to say. For someone who plays clueless pretty well, he comes up with the right answer nines time out of ten.

Not clueless, his Steve. Oblivious, yeah, hell yeah, but clueless? Not even close. He might fool himself, but he can’t fool Billy.

He tips his head back in Steve’s lap to look up at him. “You’re good at this.”

Steve smiles and shrugs. “I know a lot of really smart people. Guess they’re rubbing off on me.”

This time Billy does roll his eyes, but he manages to put a little bit of a smile behind it to soften the sarcasm. “I’m sure that’s what it is.”

“Hey, if you talked to me a year ago, it woulda been a different story,” he says, smiling still, soft, still.

“Yeah, me, too.”

Who even was he a year ago? Loud? Pissed off? Drifting to hide the fact that he didn’t belong anywhere? He’s not convinced he belongs now, but he’s carved out a few places where it’s safe to rest at least, and that’s made all the difference.

“Well, I didn’t know you then,” Billy presses, not kidding around anymore, because it’s true and Steve should hear it, and because if Steve wants to be sweet and for Billy to be sweet, too, he’s gonna get a taste of his own fucking medicine. “But I think you’re pretty smart, just you.”

Steve honest-to-God blushes, and then he grins and folds himself over Billy’s front to hold on to him. “You’re cute, Billy.”

“If you think I won’t kick your ass…”

“Whatever. You couldn’t even when I asked you to.”

Well, shit, yeah, he’s got him there. Billy grumbles, not really mad, and Steve laughs, having a blast. Curved around Billy like he is, only one side of his face is visible in the light. The rest is swallowed up in the shadow cast by his hair.

“You wanna talk cute, huh?” Billy muses, reaching up to push some of that hair away from Steve’s face.

Steve’s eyes flash, and the corner of his mouth ticks up. “Thought I was pretty.”

“You’re a lotta things.”

“Look who’s talking,” he says with a snort, then swoops down to kiss Billy’s chin. He shifts up a bit to reach his mouth. A little dreamily he asks, “Am I like your other boyfriends?”

“No,” Billy answers, unthinking, and then pauses to wonder if that’s true.

Gene was sweet like Steve, and he seemed harmless like Steve, too, but Gene let Billy run roughshod over him and never stood his ground once, not for anything. He really was as harmless as he looked. Steve, though?

Steve’s about as harmless as Henderson’s dog turned out to be.

He doesn’t back down and he doesn’t run, and that’s all Billy needs to know about him to know he’s not like anyone Billy’s ever been with.

“No, you’re not,” Billy says again, because Steve asked, and Billy doesn’t mind telling him.

“They didn’t have good hair?” Steve asks, still close enough for Billy to bite him.

Billy sinks his hand into that stupid good hair and holds Steve right where he wants him. He loves making out with Steve. Loves how soft his mouth is and how he can always feel it when he starts to want more. Steve keeps it light, though, and when he pulls back, he’s red in the face and grinning.

“Cute,” he says again, flinching when Billy flicks his nose. “Hey!”

“Talk shit, get hit, babe,” Billy croons back, stretching sinuously, and probably catching Steve’s eye if the hand he slips beneath his shirt and over his collar bone is any indication.

“You talk shit constantly.”

Billy hums, wondering he looks as spoiled as he sounds. He kinda hopes so. “Gave you a freebie last night. You couldn’t kick my ass either.”

Steve brushes the backs of his fingers over Billy’s cheek. His fingers graze Billy’s scar without catching for a few passes before trading his knuckles for a thumb and feeling around for it. When he finds it, he holds just the pad of his finger against it and says, “Hey, Billy?”

“What?”

“I won’t ever — I mean, you gotta know I wouldn’t ask you for anything that’d put you in danger.” He must see Billy starting to tense up because he continues, keeping his voice soft. “’Cuz I didn’t ask you to fight demon dogs or burn up tunnels or close a gate to wherever. _I asked you_ _not_ _to_ , right?”

Billy’s eyes sting but in a more manageable way. He makes like he’s annoyed and rolls his eyes, even though his heart’s pounding and Steve must be able to feel it right there under his hand.

“This you giving me permission not to hold your hand in public?”

“It’s me telling you I know we can’t. This is enough for me. You don’t have to prove anything to me, and you don’t have to explain it if it’s — if it’s too much, or if it hurts, or if it’s just not what you want right at that moment. You don’t have to explain it, and you don’t have to apologize.”

It nearly breaks him open, hearing those words, hearing them in that order, in Steve’s soft, sweet undertone. He closes his eyes, and Steve kisses him again, until all the horrible shadows fill up with light.

“Thanks,” he whispers, raw and ragged.

“Sure,” Steve answers, just casual enough that Billy can almost pretend there aren’t still fresh tear tracks drying on his cheeks. “But Billy? Next time you stay over and don’t wanna go home, can we just sleep in and make pancakes?”

“Yeah, okay,” Billy mumbles, rubbing at his face. His stomach growls. Traitor.

“Or we can make some now,” Steve teases, chuckling.

“Can we just sit here a little longer?”

“Okay,” Steve says, warm and bright like his own fucking sun. He runs his fingers through Billy’s hair again. “So how’re you gonna make it up to Max? For cancelling guitar shopping?”

“Aww, shit, I dunno. I’m sure she’ll think of something.”

“And you’ll just roll with it? Whatever she wants?”

“’S not really a new thing. She’s bossy as hell.”

“Uh huh.”

Billy meets his eyes. “What? You got something to say?”

“It’s just sweet. How you guys are with each other.”

“Max is — ” _Strong_ , he thinks. _Smart. Real. Relentless._ “ — pretty cool.”

“Yeah, and she loves you.”

“It’s not that,” Billy mutters, looking away to hide how hearing that, and wanting to believe it, makes his face hot. “She just wants a brother now that I finally act like one.”

Steve gives him a look, a dimple forming in the corner of his mouth. He says, slowly, “I’m sure that’s what it is.”

“Whatever,” Billy mumbles and makes a big show of turning over onto his side so he can catch Steve off his guard when he surges up to pounce on him.

“ _Gah!_ Jeez, you are like a cat.”

Billy arches his back as he settles in to get comfortable. He winds his arms under Steve’s shoulders and gives a satisfied little sigh at Steve’s arms wrapping around him. His hands soothe down the slope of his spine and back up his ribs.

Steve palms the back of his neck. “We like who you are now, y’know.”

There’s an impulse in Billy to fight him, to argue, to deflect, but he swallows around it and nuzzles his face into Steve’s chest. He smells like the door to a bakery swinging open, like the trees in the morning, like the home Billy’s never quite had.

It scares him to think what it would do to him to lose this. It scares him to think he might get to keep it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo, yo, yo, comin 2 u live from my best friend's house where we have internet and so many snacks, you guys. All the snackies. Gonna finish watching Project Power now. Be gay, do crimes. <3


	22. Different From a Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barb is alive and Zendaya is her girlfriend I don't make the rules

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um warnings for like. Um. No, actually, no warnings.

Barb drives up outside Lindy’s house thinking to wait for Lindy to come out, but rather than cross to Barb’s car, she lingers a moment in the doorway before finally stepping outside. She doesn’t get as far as gesturing for Barb to come to the door, but she clicks open her seatbelt and goes anyway, already pretty accustomed to giving Lindy what she wants.

The lawn is lush but carefully manicured, and the car in the driveway shines impeccably. Lindy’s put together, too. Her Levi’s are crisp, the yellow of her shirt stands out vibrantly against her skin tone. Today more so than when they’re at school, Barb’s floral blouse tucked into her khakis makes her feel conspicuous, like she doesn’t quite match the girl standing in front of her.

She thinks she’d imagine that she was out of her depth with Lindy anyway. She’s so pretty.

And usually she carries herself like it doesn’t matter one way or another what people think. That’s part of what makes her so cool in Barb’s mind, but her usual air of indifference is off.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“My parents want to meet you,” she grumbles, but there’s something insecure more than petulant about it. She grimaces, hand on the doorknob.

Barb shrugs. “Okay.”

“No, it’s just…” Lindy stops, looking away and then back. “They know that I don’t date boys. I didn’t tell them that we’re together or anything, and they’ll believe me if I say you’re just my friend. I just don’t know what you’re okay with.”

“Oh,” Barb breathes, surprised. Touched. “Well, I don’t mind.”

Lindy rolls up onto the balls of her feet, fidgeting, but the look in her eyes is steady and direct. “Really?”

“Yeah, I’ve told my family, and my friends know, too. It’s not a secret.”

“But it’s not really public either,” Lindy muses, a little of her trademark disdain coming back the more comfortable she gets. Not directed at Barb, but more spoken in commiseration. “Right?”

Barb tries not to shrug. She doesn’t want to make light of it when she knows it’s not fair, but that thought and what it means and everything Lindy’s told her to now, catches up to her. A smile flickers over her mouth unbidden.

“What?” Lindy asks, disarmed by Barb’s reaction.

“How are you gonna introduce me, as your girlfriend?”

“Would that be all right?” she counters, still just open and relaxed and curious, feeling out the boundaries.

Still smiling, but softer, and feeling her face warm, Barb says, “It’s okay with me if it’s okay with you.”

Lindy nods, starting to smile, too. She turns the doorknob. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

Barb reaches for her other hand and goes with her into the house. Right away two identical girls barrel around the corner dressed in matching pink overalls. They have missing front teeth in common, which Barb can see perfectly in their big adorable grins.

“Lindy, you’re back!” the girl on the right says, latching onto Lindy’s elbow. Her shirt beneath the overalls is white with a soft pink-and-red rose print.

“Not for long. Audra, Tabby, this is Barb. Can you say hi?”

“Hi,” the one with a plain grey thermal top under her overalls, says shyly.

“Hi!” the girl with the roses on her shirt says, swinging around Lindy’s elbow to Barb’s side. She looks all the way up at Barb, beaming still. She really looks a lot like Lindy. “Barb like a barbie doll?”

“Mmhmm,” Barb says holding her arm out accommodatingly when the little girl makes a grabby hand in her direction. “My mom calls my Barbie.”

“Mine calls my Odge-Podge, or Audra Christine if I’m bad. Like sometimes? When I leave the water on in the sink after brushing my teeth? She says, _Audra Christine._ Can I call you Barbie? You’re pretty like a barbie.”

Barb laughs, charmed, and lets herself be hauled into the kitchen. “You’re strong,” she says over her shoulder for Lindy’s benefit, and to see her answering smirk.

“Papa says I get it from Mama.”

“Your papa’s probably right,” Barb tells her, nodding sagely and sitting obediently at the table when Audra yanks at her sleeve.

“I like your flowers. I have flowers, too. See?”

“I saw! Very pretty.”

“Lindy never wears pretty things,” she complains, with the cutest look of disapproval on her face — frowning, she looks even more like Lindy.

“Hey,” Lindy protests, walking into the kitchen after them with Tabby balanced on her hip. “At least Tabby likes my clothes. Right, Tabs?”

Tabby buries her face in Lindy’s neck, arms wrapped tightly enough nearly to choke.

Lindy bounces her amiably, saying, “Thank you, Tabby. I do have excellent taste in fashion. What’s that? Audra’s being a meany? _She is,_ I wasn’t gonna say anything.”

“I’m not!”

“Audra? Tabitha?” a woman’s voice calls, drawing nearer to the kitchen. A beautiful woman in elegant, flowing pants and a silk top comes to take Tabby from Lindy when she holds her arm out to be transferred over. She looks up at Barb over the top of Tabby’s neat cloud of a ponytail. “Hi! You must be Barb. I’m Loretta. Guess you met the girls.”

“Yes,” Barb says, standing up to shake her hand. “They’re very sweet. You have a lovely home, Mrs. Louder.”

“Thank you, sweetheart, but Mrs. Louder is my mother-in-law. You can just call me by my name, or Lori if you want. I hope you don’t mind my asking to meet you. Lindy mentioned you in passing the other day, and I know all of her friends, so I told her I wanted to get eyes on you the next time you came around.”

“No, that’s understandable,” Barb says, letting Audra grab her hand and hold it. “My parents will probably want to meet Lindy, too, at some point. I’ve never…” She looks at Lindy, for courage, for clarification, for — confirmation that it’s definitely okay to say it. “That is, Lindy’s my first… girlfriend.”

Loretta’s face warms in a moment, a smile hitting her mouth and making her whole face looks younger than it already looked. “ _Oh,_ well, Lindy, why didn’t you say so?”

“Is a girlfriend different from a friend?” Audra asks, so innocently that Barb’s heart clenches in her chest.

“It’s a friend who’s special,” Lindy explains patiently, scooping Audra up to hold her in a mirror of her mom where she’s still holding Tabby. “A friend you get to be yourself with all the time.”

“I want Barb to be _my_ girlfriend,” Audra says right away, to muted laughter from both her sister and their mom.

“Oh, God,” a man’s voice from the hallway bemoans, but in a soft kind of way. “Please, honey, don’t go wanting to get old on me now. Oh, hello.”

“Mike, this is Barb Holland.”

“She’s my girlfriend,” Lindy adds matter-of-factly.

“Well, hello,” he says, smiling a warm, fatherly kind of smile and shaking Barb’s hand. He’s very handsome, and he looks a little more like his daughters than Loretta does, actually. His eyes and his smile definitely got passed onto them. “Nice to meet you. Which one of you monkeys said you want a girlfriend? Girl, you don’t even have all your teeth yet. Come here.”

He takes Audra off Lindy’s hands, and side by side with his lovely wife and Lindy right there with them, they make such a sweet family portrait. Barb wishes she had a camera or that she shared Will’s knack for art so she could save the image somehow.

“Baby, you gonna be home for dinner later?” he asks Lindy, looking over at Barb a moment later. “Why don’t you join us? It’s pizza night,” he offers, like pizza is a catch-all favorite.

He’s not wrong. Pizza always sounds good.

“It’s really okay?” Barb asks.

“Of course. Be back by six, okay, Lindy?” Loretta says, adjusting Tabby on her hip when she starts to slip. “We’ll have an extra place ready at the table.”

“Okay.” She bounces on her heels a moment, only a little impatient. “Can we go now?”

“Yes, yes, we’re done hogging your date,” she teases, winking at Barb so fondly, so lightly, Barb almost can’t believe it. “Go have fun.”

Lindy gives them and Barb the driest look and tips her chin for Barb to follow her out of the kitchen.

“Bye, Barbie,” a tiny voice calls out.

“Bye, Tabby. Bye, Audra.”

“Byeeeee!”

“It was nice to meet you Loretta, Mike.”

They nod agreeably, and Barb goes with Lindy outside. Once again, she lingers briefly on the step with the door closed. She leans back against it, looking at nothing for a long moment. Barb gives her a few seconds, burying her hands in her pockets.

“They’re so nice,” Barb says, after a while. “You have a beautiful family.”

“Yeah,” Lindy murmurs, nodding, complacent. “Thanks.” She snaps out of her thoughts, looking right at Barb with a kind of startled look on her face. Without another word, she walks off the porch toward Barb’s car.

Barb follows after her, ready to wait if Lindy doesn’t want to talk about it. But apparently she just needed some distance between her and the house to feel comfortable because they’re only halfway down the street before she clears her throat to say:

“I knew a long time ago, and I never tried to lie about it, you know?” she starts, crossing her arms tightly around herself. “They didn’t always get it. I think they still don’t really get it, but they try. More than they used to.”

“They obviously love you a lot.”

Lindy nods, but her face is like stone, and she's still holding herself so tightly.

Barb says, “I knew for a long time, too, but I could never say it. The first time I could admit it… I was in the hospital. They’d just found me, after. It felt — ” Her voice strangles in her throat. “It felt important. To say it at least once to someone, that felt important. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah.” Lindy watches her, features softening a little bit at a time. “I know what you mean.”

Nodding, Barb brings the Cabrio to a sharp stop at a red light. “My mom wasn’t surprised. My dad was, a little. But they were kind about it. Always. I think if — if you wanted to meet them and for them to know, then — then they’d still be kind about it. To you. Us.”

Lindy reaches to take Barb’s hand, finally smiling again. “It’s okay with me if it’s okay with you.”

“Actually, there’s somebody else I’d really like you to meet,” she says, putting her foot on the gas when the light turns green. “You might think it’s weird, though.”

“I won’t.”

“Well, so before I was in the hospital, when I was missing, Will Byers was missing, too. Do you remember?”

“Do I remember the only interesting thing to happen in Hawkins in the last twenty years? Yeah, Barb, I remember. Pretty sure everyone remembers.”

“Before we were found, we found each other,” Barb explains, careful to watch her words. “I don’t know how long it was, but we looked out for one another. We almost died, you know? But we protected each other. And I guess, I don’t know, we still do. I care a lot about him.”

“Why would I think that’s weird?” Lindy asks, gentle in how she says it. “You just met my kid sisters, one of whom I think wants to run away with you. Thanks for that, by the way.”

She laughs. “Audra _is_ very charismatic. For a five-year-old. You’ll like Will. He’s sweet.”

“Scrappy, too, from the sounds of it.” She squeezes Barb’s hand. “My people.”

Barb grins, liking the sound of that. Liking the sound of all of it. “Speaking of scrappy, Nancy’s been on me to bring you to lunch with her and Jonathan sometime. I told her it was kind of soon, but I did just meet your parents, so.”

“So many milestones, so little time,” Lindy muses, giving Barb a sly look that makes her face burn. She laughs and turns the radio on, spinning the dial to search for a suitable station. “Kidding, Barb. Kidding.”

It’s exciting, though, thinking of what’s to come.

“Is Carter having you guys write a paper before winter break in the AP class?” Lindy asks idly, turning the radio down to a murmur and glancing out the window.

“Yeah, we get to choose between _Frankenstein_ and _Wide Sargasso Sea_.”

Lindy looks up at that. “You got to read _Frankenstein?_ God, the regular class sucks.”

Laughing, Barb listens to Lindy’s breakdown of the syllabus and her upcoming assignments. They argue good-naturedly over the themes in their reading materials. Barb comes up with the most contrary counterpoints just to sit back and listen when Lindy takes off on impassioned rants.

She really just likes her a lot. It makes her glad she got to be here for this, that she got to be alive long enough to find someone and hold on.

It’s a nice feeling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3


	23. Just Say the Word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Billy are chauffeurs for the middle school dance and take the opportunity to have a cute date night.  
> ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some nsfw content in this chapter and also discussions of past abuse and violence (Neil Hargrove)

Steve picks Henderson up at his house the night of the winter dance just like he promised. His hair is a work of art, and to say Steve’s proud doesn’t really do him justice. The girls are gonna love him.

 _“Henderson,”_ Steve gushes when he fastens his seatbelt. “Very nice.”

He grins. “Thanks! You got the goods?”

“You know I do.” Steve hands him the tape he was asked to bring for this occasion and pulls the car out onto the road.

Henderson pops the tape in the cassette player. The opening notes filter into the car, and he nods in time with the drum. “Oh, yeah.”

“Right?” He stops the car at a stop sign in time with a break in the music.

They turn to each other on the beat, and Steve swings a left turn. They belt out the words together:

“ _Listen to the wind blow! / Watch the sun rise / Run in the shadows / Damn your love, damn your lies!_ ”

Henderson picks up the chorus on his own, and Steve jumps on the harmony, playing around with it until he can hear which notes sound right. It feels good, blazing a trail down the empty roads and yelling along with the music at the top of his lungs. For the second chorus Steve takes the main part.

“ _And if you don’t love me now,_ ” Steve sings.

“ _— you don’t love me now!_ ”

“ _You will never love me again! I can still hear you saying…_ ”

“— _still hear you saying…_ ”

“ _You would never break the chain!_ ”

“ _Never break the chain!_ ”

The music drops away, leaving only bass notes to trickle from the speakers. Dustin taps his fingers on the dashboard to mimic the slinky drumbeat. A guitar comes in, and they bang their heads. Steve whoops a laugh out the open window.

_“Chaaaaaaaiiiin, keep us together!”_

_“Run in the shadow!”_

Henderson howls out the window, too, both of them hollering and laughing, delirious with music, high on sharing it. When the song ends and the next one starts, Henderson turns the volume down just enough to be heard. Sounding shocked, he says, “You practiced!”

“You asked me to?” Steve reminds him.

_Sweet wonderful you  
You make me happy with the things you do_

“Hey, did you ever end up asking Max to be your date for this thing? You never said.”

“Uhh, no.” Henderson hesitates, starts to say more, then gives up again. He shrugs. “No.”

“That’s okay. You’ll see her there, at least. You can ask her to dance. It’ll be casual.”

“How do you know she’s gonna be there?” Henderson squints and rolls his eyes a second later. “Oh, yeah. You’re in with her brother.”

Steve snorts. He likes the sound of that. Being in with Billy makes what they have sound like it’s an exclusive club or something. Like they have jackets — well, okay, they _are_ exclusive, and Steve _has_ been trying his hardest to get Billy in his jacket, so… okay, yeah. Fine.

“We’re meeting up after we drop you guys off,” Steve says, even though it’s not something Henderson or anyone strictly needs to know about.

“Like a date?” he asks, crossing his arms and giving Steve _a look_.

“Yeah,” Steve says, _not blushing_.

“Oh. That’s cool, I guess.”

“You don’t still hate him, do you?”

Henderson waves his hand like he’s clearing away smoke. “If he’s all right with you guys, he’s all right with me.”

Steve brings his shoulders down and releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding. It’s not like he’d stop going out with Billy if Henderson didn’t approve, but it’d be difficult, somehow. Even if they can’t afford to be super obvious about what they have, Steve doesn’t want there to be friction with anyone whose opinion he actually does care about.

“So is this a thing we’re allowed to talk about now?” Henderson asks, cautious but with a light in his eyes Steve feels wary of.

“If you want. I’m not gonna tell you anything private, though.”

“Gross, Steve.”

He rolls his eyes. “Nothing I say leaves this car, Henderson.”

“I don’t know anyone who’d wanna hear about you and Billy swapping spit, Steve, thanks anyway.”

“Oh, my God, you’re the worst. You’re actually the worst,” Steve groans, not meaning it in the slightest.

Henderson pulls his leg up on the seat and turns to face Steve. “I’m more curious about, y’know, how you guys even figured it out. Because he’s — _was_ scary, and you’re — were… kinda clueless?”

“ _Okay_ , I — just because I didn’t think — that’s not the kinda thing you just _assume_ about somebody.”

“You can see why I’d be curious.”

Steve purses his lips. He gets it, yeah. That was the question Nancy kept asking, too, right after _why_.

“He got in my face, and I was kinda egging him on.”

“You — ? Were you _trying_ to get punched out, Steve? Jesus!”

“Well…” He shrugs. As a matter of fact, he had been trying to get punched out.

“Oh-kay. I wanna say I’m astonished at your poor survival instincts, but I picked up on those already. So what happened next? I’m guessing he didn’t come right out and say he liked you?” Henderson tilts his head, waiting.

“He bit me.”

The passenger’s seat goes dead quiet. Steve keeps his firmly eyes on the road, and the silence persists. Fleetwood Mac is a distant hum beneath the rumble of the road passing beneath them. Steve ruffles his hair and blinks hard at the middle school when it comes into view.

_“Did you say he bit you?”_

Steve thinks back to something Henderson’s said to him about Billy before and repeats it now. “Are you really even surprised?”

Henderson starts to reply a few times but can’t seem to put the words in order. Steve bites back a smile and parks at the curb in front of the school. A second later he notices Billy’s car idling up ahead near the fences. This time he does blush, but not because he’s embarrassed. Billy’s so paranoid about being seen alone with him in public that they don’t get to do this as often as he’d like.

“Oh, right,” he muses, catching sight of where Steve’s looking. “Wouldn’t want you to be late.”

“Shut up, Henderson.”

 _“Bit you,”_ he mutters, climbing out of the car. “I can’t believe you’re alive, Steve.”

“Go to your dance,” Steve calls through the open window. “You look great! Dance with somebody! I wanna hear all about it!”

Henderson waves him off and stomps straight through the doors. Steve glances back at Billy’s car, then around the parking lot. There’s no one around. Steve would go to him regardless, but he knows Billy wouldn’t like it if somebody saw, so he checks. He always checks. That done, he parks his car and jogs across the lot around to the Camaro. The passenger’s side door is unlocked just like he knew it’d be. He ducks inside and pulls the door shut behind him.

Billy looks over at him, lazy and lingering, like his heart hasn’t been beating faster every minute just like Steve’s has. “Took your time, didn’t you?”

“I missed you, too,” Steve murmurs, smiling. He leans across the center console to steal a kiss off the edge of Billy’s mouth, not sure if he’ll allow it but giving him time to pull back if he can’t yet.

But Billy doesn’t move away. He doesn’t move at all for a few seconds until he turns his head and tugs gently at Steve’s lip with his teeth — like he heard Steve saying their first kiss started with Billy trying to eat him alive. Steve makes a noise, and Billy licks it clean out of his mouth, soft, soft, then he inches his mouth out from under Steve’s. He shifts the car into drive and turns his head to watch the road.

Far from discouraged, Steve slinks down to mouth at the place where Billy’s jaw meets his ear. He follows the line of his neck down to his pulse and sucks hard. That gets a quiet little grunt out of Billy, but he keeps the car steady.

Drowsy heat spreads in Steve’s belly, warm and insistent, and his mouth drops open against Billy’s neck.“Billy, can I…?”

Can he? What is it he wants to do? His instinct is to palm himself through his jeans, but that’s not really what he’s craving. He puts his hand on Billy’s leg instead, higher up on his thigh than could be considered polite.

“I don’t know, Harrington, can you?” Billy says, voice low. He brushes his temple against Steve’s forehead without looking away from the road.

Steve moves his hand where he wants it, and Billy breathes out evenly. Steve bites him and presses down with the heel of his hand, groaning when Billy hisses through his teeth. He’s stiffening up like Steve knew he’d be, and Steve wants to make him feel good so badly he’s just about fucking dizzy with it. He slips the button on Billy’s jeans and inches the zipper down.

“This okay?” Steve asks him.

Billy nods, lips parted, eyes on the road.

He touches Billy and holds him in his hand for a moment, enjoying the weight in his hand and how hot his skin is. “Still okay?”

“Yeah.”

Steve drops his cheek onto Billy’s shoulder to watch when he takes him out of his pants. He bites his lip, heart pounding in his ears. Billy’s put his mouth on him before, but Steve’s never tried it himself. He turns to kiss Billy’s collar bone where his shirt’s hanging open, mind made up.

He whispers, “I wanna put you in my mouth.”

Billy gasps, soft and sweet. He nudges his hips up toward Steve’s hand. “Fuck.”

“Mmm. Can I?”

“ _Yes, fuck,_ I want you to.”

“Your hands stay on the wheel,” Steve tells him, mostly to be cute, but he can feel Billy twitch in his hand at the command. He grins and shifts down low in his seat. “Keep it steady, sweetheart.”

He pumps his hand just once and his mouth waters. It’s not all gonna fit, he knows, so he presses just his tongue against him at first, thinking he’s gonna take it slow. Billy gives a quiet little sigh, and Steve’s stomach flips in response, hungry, wanting to devour Billy and make him feel good all at once.

 _Fuck,_ the way he tastes, the quiet whisper of Steve’s hair against Billy’s shirt, the sweet musky smell of the cologne Steve gave him, the heat coming off him…

Without really meaning to, Steve takes him in a little too far and comes up coughing, eyes wet.

“You don’t have to take it all, Steve,” Billy croaks.

“You do it,” Steve says. He knows it’s not a contest, but he can’t help wanting to impress.

“Baby — ” His hands are locked tight on the wheel, knuckles are white. “Anything you can’t fit, just, with your hand,” he grits out, jaw set, thighs and stomach twitching. “You know what I mean.”

Steve squeezes him and brushes his lips against the head. “Like this?”

He manages maybe a dozen more passes with his hand wrapped tightly around the base of Billy’s dick before Billy fumbles out a frantic warning. Steve keeps his mouth right where it is, just like Billy has for him ever since they got their test results back from the clinic.

Billy makes a lilting, rough sound in the back of his throat, and a second later Steve’s mouth fills with _hot_ and _wet_ , and he swallows it down. It’s weird, but he kinda likes it anyway.

When Billy’s finished, Steve pulls off him and rests his head against his belly. He takes his time putting Billy back in his jeans and buttoning him up, almost wanting to keep his dick in his hand, just to feel the exact moment he gets hard again like Steve’s hoping he will. Billy takes one hand deliberately off the wheel and drops it tenderly into Steve’s hair, combing his fingers through it a few times. He meets some resistance from the hairspray but not enough to make him stop. Steve’s heart is still pounding in his ears.

He feels the direction of the car shift, and he hears the ground switch from pavement to bare earth. Billy kills the engine, and the sound of their deep, even breathing fills the car.

“How was that?” Steve rasps.

Billy laughs, not an unkind sound, but fond and warm, sleepy. “Good. How’d you like it?”

Steve hums, closing his eyes. He turns to kiss Billy’s wrist and presses his cheek into Billy’s hand, fully sprawled out across the center console with his head in Billy’s lap. He’s still _so hard_.

“Hey, Steve.” He waits for Steve to blink his eyes open. “Backseat.”

A tingle works its way down Steve’s spine. He struggles to sit up, only getting warmer and more flustered at the sturdy, quiet power in Billy’s hands where he helps him up as easily as if he weighed nothing at all.

Somehow, in spite of his shaky limbs, Steve manages to fall into the backseat. He watches Billy twist in his seat and step neatly over the center console, so tightly controlled in his movements that Steve feels a flush of embarrassment for his clumsiness. It’s hard to get hung up on it, though, the way Billy’s looking at him. His eyes are dark and the curve to his lips is teasing and sweet, even more so when Steve pulls him in close for a kiss.

Billy backs him into the corner behind the driver’s seat and slips his tongue inside Steve’s mouth, fingers leisurely working his fly open. Steve’s practically vibrating, his skin thrumming like a live wire.

“Billy…”

He pulls Steve out and tucks his chin to look at him. He purrs, “You want my mouth, too?”

Steve makes a desperate noise. He does want Billy’s mouth, but he wants to kiss him, too. He does kiss him, all need and no finesse, plunging his hands into Billy’s hair and gripping him tight.

Billy yanks his jeans down by his pockets, pulling away to look at him. “Know why I’m better than you at giving head?”

“Spite?” Steve gasps, and the car fills with Billy’s laughter.

“Practice,” he croons, chuckling darkly. And then, sweetly, “You fuckin’ dork.”

He slinks down the length of Steve’s body and demonstrates his point. Steve jerks against the door, his whole body tightening up at the wet heat of Billy’s mouth closing over him.

_“Ahh, Billy, I’m…”_

Not gonna last, which is a crying shame for how enthusiastically Billy’s going down on him. Even knowing how close Steve is, he just keeps swallowing him down and twisting his fist and humming around him, and _fuck_ , Steve’s gonna _explode_.

_“Billy, oh, fuck.”_

He moans long and loud, flooding Billy’s mouth and collapsing back against the door. His head’s all clouded up, leaving him too warm and too slow to move or even think. Before he’s worked out how to turn his brain back on, Billy sits up, facing him with his head leaned sideways against the seat and his eyes closed. His hair is a mess, and his collar gapes to one side where Steve probably grabbed him earlier. The line of his spine is a sweet, lissome curve.

“Someday I’m gonna suck your dick like that,” Steve murmurs.

He watches Billy’s mouth shiver into a slow smile through heavy-lidded eyes. Billy licks his lips, eyes still closed. Some of his teeth glisten in the dim moonlight. Steve holds back a laugh and pulls his pants back up before settling in to get comfortable.

“What, you don’t believe me?”

“Be suckin’ dick a while before you get that good, pretty boy.”

“You think so? Even with you for a teacher?” Steve presses his knuckles against Billy’s knee. “Even if I work really hard at it?”

Billy opens his eyes a crack. “That what you want?”

Steve hears that note of doubt in his voice and uncurls his fingers against denim. He says, “To work really hard at sucking your dick? Sure.”

That gets him a scoff and a smile, almost bashful. Billy grazes the backs of Steve’s knuckles with his fingertips, and Steve turns his hand, threading their fingers together. A burst of something warm breaks loose and wreaks havoc in Steve’s chest. He smiles up at Billy, feeling light and full at the same time. He wishes he knew how to put it into words.

“You really are sweet,” Billy murmurs, idly pressing his thumb against the edge of Steve’s nail.

“So I’ve been told.”

Billy rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling when Steve kisses him. “When you asked if you were like my old boyfriends, how many’d you think I’d had?”

Steve hums, thinking. He hadn’t given it much thought at the time, except to assume Billy had probably dated as many guys as Steve had dated girls. Knowing what he does about Billy’s checkered history, though, he can see how that was a stupid assumption to make. He doesn’t have a real answer, so he goes with the truth: “I don’t know. Enough to be really good at blowjobs?”

“Bad math, Harrington. Only takes one.”

“Oh, so… Really?”

He looks down at their hands. “Guess it sometimes feels like he was the only one.”

“What was his name?”

Billy thinks for a long time before saying, in a tone that’s hard to place, “Gene.”

“Nice guy?” Steve watches the emotions — none of them easy to name — flicker over Billy’s face and makes an attempt at poking a hole in the tension. “Nice guy but shitty boyfriend? Been there, done that.”

“Really? Have you?” Billy asks, a tiny, amused smirk pulling at the edge of his mouth.

Steve blinks at him and then shakes his head. “Billy, obviously I’m not calling you a shitty boyfriend. I’m saying, me, I was a shitty boyfriend. At one point in time.”

“So was I,” he mumbles, and the last of his easiness locks up, giving way to something older and darker. He starts to turn to face the front but ends up bringing his knee up onto the seat instead.

Steve’s seen him get like this before, so he does what he hadn’t thought to do the first time he saw it. He inches closer and squeezes Billy’s hand, trying to get some of the distance out of his eyes. “Stay here with me, Billy.”

The look in his eyes — Steve wishes he had the words for that, too. It’s not fear, exactly, but it might be the held breath before fear kicks in, like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. It nearly bowls Steve right over, that look. He’s grateful then that he’s holding onto Billy because he doesn’t know what he would do if he wasn’t. Fall down, it feels like, even though they’re sitting and there’s nowhere to go.

Steve’s ready to stay here and sit patiently for a long time, but Billy doesn’t make him wait. He sighs and lists forward, dropping his head against Steve’s shoulder.

“There’s worse things I’ve been, too, Billy. It’s not just you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Billy says, not believing him. “A nice guy like you, Steve? Really?”

“Tommy must’ve told you some of the shit I did. _King Steve_ ,” he says, rolling his eyes. “That’s who you were expecting the night we met.”

Steve thought Billy was a certain way when they met, too, and maybe he was kind of right, then, but Billy wasn’t all that wrong about him either. Some pair they make. Less douchebag-looking tough guys and more soft-hearted kids wanting to be held.

That warm, loose feeling bursts in Steve’s chest again, and this time it almost hurts. There’s so much he wants to learn about Billy and so much more he wants to show him — things like how not to be afraid of the silence in between words and how not to hate himself for wanting nice things. They have time before they need to get back to the middle school, but it’s not enough for all the questions he has. Before he can decide on one to start with, Billy beats him to the punch.

“What changed? Why’d _you_ change?”

It’s a fair question, and about as straightforward as Billy gets. Steve considers it honestly and finds he doesn’t have to work that hard to arrive at a conclusion. It’s something he’s thought about before. A big part of it was just wanting things to work with Nancy, and that meant killing monsters and making amends and learning how to recognize when he was wrong or acting in a way he didn’t like. So it started with Nancy, but it wasn’t all for her. Or about her, even.

“I guess I realized I was hurting people, and I didn’t want to anymore.”

“The princess help you come to that decision?”

“Yeah, she did, Billy. She’s a good person, and she always saw the best in me. What about you? I know you didn’t do it for me.”

He takes his hand out of Steve’s. “Max. My dad…”

Steve edges back a bit, just far enough to see Billy’s face. He’s pieced together a working opinion of Neil Hargrove, but he’s never heard outright from Billy what he’s like. The main thing he’s gathered is that Billy’s scared of him and Hop wants to take his head off with a well-timed punch. Steve feels a similar kind of way, hateful of the knowledge that anybody could hurt Billy and never have to answer to anyone for it.

“You know she’s friends with that whole little group,” Billy tells him, sort of meanderingly. “They’ve been tight ever since that night with the dogs, but she’s sweet on that Sinclair kid. Lucas, right?”

Remembering Henderson and his crush, Steve sucks in a slow breath, regretting the advice he gave. “Well, he’s a good kid. They’re all good kids.”

“Yeah, I don’t doubt it, and my dad wouldn’t give a shit if it was Henderson or Wheeler or Byers. But it’s not fuckin’ Henderson or Wheeler or Byers. You get what I’m saying?”

It slots into place for Steve then. He blinks hard and shakes his head. “Your dad’s an asshole, Billy.”

“You’re getting it,” Billy grumbles. “Look, can you — I can’t fuckin’ hear you.”

One knee mounted on the seat, Billy drags Steve out from behind the driver’s seat and plops down on his other side. Steve stares at him, startled and more than a little hot under the collar. Sue him, he really likes it when Billy manhandles him.

“Sorry,” Billy grouses, glaring out the window to try to hide, but Steve’s brain catches up with him before he can get away.

“You can’t hear me? Is that what you said?”

Billy rubs his thumb against his cheek, over that scar he showed Steve that day up in his bedroom. A tendon stands out on his neck. “Not with this ear. Not since the summer.”

“Did something happen?”

He closes his eyes and says, “He beat the shit out of me, Harrington.”

A strange, distant ringing picks up in Steve’s ears, and he’s been so spoiled lately on Billy’s genuine laugh that the cruel one turns his stomach.

“It’s why we had to leave. Not because he hit me so hard he busted my fucking eardrum. Not because he broke my ribs and messed up face. Because he caught me kissing a guy and he couldn’t help himself.”

“That’s why you were in the hospital,” Steve mumbles, putting it all together.

Steve’s only seen Neil Hargrove a few times around town, and he doesn’t seem like a scary guy just to look at him. For all that he looks ordinary enough, though, there’s something else in him that makes him seem more like a brick wall than a person. Steve only knows what it is because he happened to pass that sturdiness onto Billy, and he’s seen it every time they’ve ever squared off in basketball practice.

He felt it at his back the night of the dogs with Billy’s shoulders pressed up against his, and he’d seen it outside the lab, too, when Billy looked ready to shatter right before his eyes.

“Was Gene the guy he saw you with?”

“Yeah.”

“Where was he when it happened?”

“Gone,” Billy says, shrugging and leaning back against the seat.

“So he didn’t even know you were in trouble that whole time?”

Billy gives him a look like he just sprouted a second head and says, slowly, “He took off after my dad showed up. _Because_ he showed up.”

Steve gapes at him, not understanding. “Then he saw everything?”

Another shrug, another blank expression.

“And he left you anyway?”

“What do you think he shoulda done differently?” he asks sarcastically, stretching out. “Stay behind and get his ass kicked with me? Mighta been worth it just for the matching hospital bracelets, I guess.”

“I’m not saying — ”

“Yeah, and then all my dad’s cop buddies coulda gotten a good look at his face. Figure out where he lived, next of kin, all that shit.” He shakes his head, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Age of consent’s eighteen in Cali. You wanna guess what happens to a guy in jail when people say he fucks kids? Best case scenario he lawyers up and nobody calls Immigration. _Worst case scenario_ — ”

“Okay, Billy, God, I get it. I wasn’t gonna say anything about him.”

“Then what?”

“Just that,” Steve stammers, not really having the words for the feeling tearing at his heart. “Having to be alone for that sounds… were you scared?”

Billy blinks into the middle distance, frowning. Faintly, under his breath, he says, “Not at first. I remember wishing he’d just yell at me ’cuz then maybe he’d stop. But he didn’t say shit the whole time, not a word.” He scrubs at his face and glares down at the sheen of tears glinting over his palms and fingers. _“He didn’t say anything, Steve.”_

Steve presses his forehead into Billy’s shoulder. His throat feels heavy, like there’s a scream caught in it.

“I kept tellin’ him I wouldn’t do it anymore, and for what? He didn’t care. If Max’s dad hadn’t been there to pull him off me, I think he woulda killed me.”

“Billy, why don’t you tell Hop,” Steve says, crying almost. It bursts out of him like a dam breaking free and heaving a city’s worth of water out of its broken jaws. “He’s not an asshole. He’d fight for you if you just gave him a chance — ”

“Yeah, that’s what Sam said. Max’s dad,” Billy mutters, turning to the window again. His voice gets tired, remembering. “Never did shit for my mom — and sometimes she looked bad, Steve — but they’d still just bring her right back to him for more of the same. That’s your big idea? Cops?”

Steve doesn’t bother pointing out the difference between Hop and the dickhead police in California. He gets hung up on the other part of what Billy just said. “Your mom? Is she…”

“Dead? I don’t know, probably. She left. Something like ten years ago, I guess.”

It’s like something out of those really old books Ms. Carter makes them read. Just tragedy after tragedy after tragedy, but it’s Billy’s fucking life.

“You asked why I changed,” Billy says, sounding weary down in his bones. “It’s because all that bullshit happened, and it didn’t matter to my dad if I was sorry. Didn’t matter if I was happy either. Wouldn’t be surprised if he preferred it when I was just fuckin’ pissed all the time. That way he always had a reason, and I guess I did, too.”

“A reason for what?”

“To make her hate me. Guess I thought…” He trails off, sighing and rubbing his hands over his face. “I thought if she was afraid of me, she wouldn’t have to be afraid of him. That’s how stupid I am. I really believed that.”

Steve knows all about making someone else feel small to seem bigger. He can see how that feeling could’ve gotten all twisted up for Billy, especially if he’d been trying to protect Max at the same time.

“My dad… he doesn’t give a shit what I want. I don’t know if it’ll be the same for Max, but I know we want the same thing. I figure if I still got a chance to have it, so does she. Took me way too long to realize that keeping her safe is gonna be a shit-ton easier if we’re not fighting each other.”

Steve reclaims Billy’s hand, gently, testing to see if it’s okay. When he’s not shaken off, he asks, “So what is it?”

“What’s what?”

“What you and Max have in common. The thing you both want.”

Billy’s lips scrunch into a tight line. He looks at Steve then, reluctant and embarrassed. “To be happy.”

Steve feels his eyes go wide as dinner plates and says, “Oh.”

“Or whatever,” Billy mutters, looking away.

Even in the dark, Steve can see his face turning red. He leans up and kisses that burning cheek, feels it warm beneath his lips. “So you finally got the whole catching flies with honey thing,” Steve muses against his cheek.

“Don’t know who’d wanna fucking catch flies anyway,” he grumbles back, turning to put his mouth closer to Steve’s.

“It’s like a… metaphor.”

“An idiom, Harrington,” Billy snorts, kissing him.

Steve kisses him back enthusiastically. He likes the way Billy’s smile feels against his own. Maybe he even loves it. When Billy’s shoulders finally relax beneath his hands, Steve takes another chance. The stakes aren’t very high, but he’s hungry for Billy’s laugh. He wants him to feel happy and safe again.

“Does this mean you _want_ to wear my jacket?”

Billy grabs Steve by the waist and hauls him into his lap. “I regret telling you anything.”

“No, you don’t,” Steve murmurs, gleeful, grinning, trying to glow like sunlight so Billy will forget about the darkness for a little while. “C’mon, I’m serious, you’d look great in my Letterman, and hey, turnabout’s fair play. That jacket you wore to Tina’s would swallow me up.”

“ _I’ll_ swallow you up,” Billy rumbles, reeling Steve in right up against his chest when his only reaction is to laugh.

Steve allows it for a while, but there’s something nagging at him — some thought of how it can’t all have been tragedy, not when this is who Billy really is. When he says Billy’s name as a question, Billy hums but doesn’t take his mouth off the hinge of Steve’s jaw.

“Were you ever happy?”

Billy’s hands stall in the center of his back. He eases one under Steve’s shirt and presses it there without pressure or intent, just holding them skin to skin. “Sometimes.”

He waits. He likes kissing Billy and being kissed by him, but he likes listening to him, too. One thing Steve’s learned is that the shorter Billy’s answers get, the more time he’s taking to think through what he really wants to say. So Steve waits, and Billy keeps his hand splayed across his back while his mind works.

“My mom used to take me to the beach and watch me surf.”

“What’d she look like?”

“Blonde hair, blue eyes.” He scoffs, but a smile wants to bloom on the edge of his mouth. “Like me.”

Steve’s grateful for that. Billy shouldn’t have to look at himself in the mirror and see someone who hates him looking back.

“What else?”

“She was pretty.”

“You already said she looked like you,” Steve teases, jerking in Billy’s lap when he digs two fingers into his ribs. An instinctive laugh tumbles out of him, and he looks at Billy, who’s noticed. “No, _no_ — ”

But it’s too late. Billy’s poking at his ribs with that hand slipped up under his shirt, and Steve’s flailing. He digs into the seats with his knees and fumbles after Billy’s hand.

“AHH! _Billy_ , don’t change the — _sub_ ject!”

Billy stops with his hand spanning the edge of Steve’s stomach and a startled half-smile on his face that Steve can’t even be mad at. Steve points at his face, aiming for stern.

“Don’t change the subject.”

His tongue slips out to wet his lips, the smile lingering. “She liked bright colors, but yellow was her favorite, and she smiled a lot when it was just us. She had a voice like… leaves changing in the fall, and she loved me.”

Of course she did. Steve has no way of knowing that for sure, but nobody could know Billy, actually know him, and not love him. He’s been an asshole and a bully, but that’s not the beginning or the end of him. It’s poison he thought was a sword and shield, and maybe he’ll be trying to ditch the last of it for a long time, but he won’t give up. Steve knows he won’t. He doesn’t have the words for any of that, though, so he just wraps his arms around Billy and holds him instead. Billy presses his face into Steve’s neck and breathes.

“It’s not so bad, Steve.”

“You don’t have to say that to me, Billy.”

“Well, it’s not,” he insists, smoothing the hand under his shirt up between Steve’s shoulders. “Max doesn’t hate me. You don’t hate me. Kinda hard to believe it took _Middle-of-Nowhere, Indiana_ to make me pull my head out of my ass. You’d think my shitbag father would be proud.”

Steve shifts his weight in Billy’s lap, not really meaning to make a point, but sort of doing it anyway.

Billy glances up at him and rolls his eyes, but like he’s resigned more than he’s annoyed. “He’s never gonna be proud of me, I know that.”

He grabs Billy by the jaw and kisses him, firm and deep. “ _Fuck him_. He’s a piece of shit.”

“’S not so bad,” Billy says again, and the look on his face is so calm that for a moment, that Steve really believes him. “I don’t need jack shit from him. He wouldn’t give it to me even if I did.”

“What _do_ you need? Just say the word, I’ll get it for you.”

Billy hums and pulls Steve closer, as close as he can. He raises his eyebrows, and after a few seconds of not getting it, Steve’s mouth drops open and his face gets hot. Billy’s voice comes out soft and slow like honey. “What, like you’re surprised?”

“No, just — ” Steve stammers, getting warmer when Billy kisses his neck. “You’re really sweet, I guess.”

“You guess?” Billy laughs.

“I’m — oh, my God, stop laughing at me!” Steve objects, but he’s laughing, too. “Dick.”

“Whatever,” he mumbles against Steve’s throat. “You’ve been laughing at my stupid ass all night.”

Steve presses into him, humming and getting his hand in Billy’s hair. His eyes drift over Billy’s shoulder out the back window, and he stiffens at the sight of approaching headlights. “Car!”

Billy goes easily when Steve drags him sideways across the seats. Steve sprawls over him, and they wait for the lights to pass. Whoever it is doesn’t even slow down. Billy’s hands coming up around him are warm, and the line of his mouth is soft, even smirking.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Steve breathes, grinning, heart beating a little faster.

Hooking two fingers in Steve’s collar, he says, “Get down here.”

Steve fucking loves making out with Billy. He loves that possessive thrill he gets when he breathes in the smell of his cologne on Billy’s skin, and he loves how handsy Billy gets and the little sounds he makes in the back of his throat when he’s really into it. Steve really wants to blow him again before they head back, but he doesn’t know if they have time and he’s not in the mood to rush if they don’t. Feels like maybe Billy’s forgotten about having to rush anywhere, though, the way he’s dipping his tongue in Steve’s mouth like he’s lapping at cream.

“Mmm, Billy.”

Billy hums back and winds an arm around Steve’s neck, and… yeah.

“Billy…” he sighs, burning up in his face and in his fingertips. He drops his forehead against Billy’s shoulder, and Billy nips at his neck, gentle, hotter than anything. Soft, gasping, Steve whispers, “Billy.”

“Billy, what?” he asks, smirking even though Steve can’t see. He presses a kiss to Steve’s cheek. “Billy, stop?” Pressing another, deeper kiss to the spot beneath his jaw, he says, “Billy, don’t stop?”

“Billy,” Steve groans, pushing up just enough to be out of kissing range. “The time.”

For a second Billy just stares at him, not understanding. Then he lays his head back and checks his watch. “Ah, shit.”

“Time to go?”

Sighing, Billy looks up at him. “Here in a minute.”

“Bummer,” Steve says, giving him a lingering look.

“I can’t be late getting Max home tonight,” Billy tells him, taking great time and care on each word. His face is still so calm, but Steve can tell he regrets having to turn him down. As red as his face still is — and as much as Steve can feel that he was ready to go again — he’s obviously done.

“I know.”

“Okay.”

“Hey, Billy?”

“Yeah?”

“All that stuff before, thanks for telling me.”

The total calm in Billy’s face doesn’t flicker. It doesn’t collapse in on itself like it has in the past. He nods and touches the side of Steve’s face, drawing him in like he wants a kiss but pressing their foreheads together instead.

He closes his eyes, and so does Steve, the lump in his throat coming back. Billy’s words play back in his head: _It’s not so bad, Steve._

It feels pretty bad, but locked tight in this moment with Billy, he can sort of see what he means. He wishes it was enough. He wants to believe it can be and it maybe will someday, but when? After graduation? Steve doesn’t want Billy to go, but he can’t stand the thought of him staying either.

He doesn’t know where that leaves them. They’ve been sending in applications all over, but Steve knows what his grades are like and the kind of personal essays he churns out when he’s trying his best. Billy’s getting out of Hawkins, it’s what has to happen, and Steve would be happy for him regardless, but he meant it when he told Nancy he was going nowhere fast. That thought’s never really scared him before. He thinks it might, now, just a little bit.

Steve inches down to lay his cheek on Billy’s shoulder. “When’m I gonna see you again?”

“Already said I’d help you study for your French final,” Billy reminds him. “Just wait for me in the library after school on Monday. I gotta take Max home first, but I’ll be there.”

Billy doesn’t even take French, but he tested into Spanish IV when he transferred, and apparently the two languages are close enough that Billy can pretty reliably puzzle out conjugations and articles. Nine times out of ten he can even guess simple vocabulary words on the first try. Asshole.

“I can’t make out with you in the library,” Steve complains, which is a legitimate thing to be upset about. “When am I gonna see you outside of school?”

“Shit, Harrington, I don’t know. Over break sometime. It’s two weeks. We’ll figure something out.”

“You can just come over whenever you want. My parents’ll be home right around Christmas, but they won’t care. My dad’ll get you a beer, and my mom’ll pinch your cheek.”

“Oh, she will, huh? And you won’t be jealous?”

Steve sputters. “Hit on my mom in front me, Billy Hargrove. I fucking dare you. See if I touch your dick afterwards.”

“So he does have a jealous streak in him,” Billy croons appreciatively, grinning, even as Steve climbs off him. “You know, babe, I kinda wondered.”

“You’re right, Billy,” Steve replies airily, already clambering into the front seat. “We gotta get back.”

“Aww, Stevie, you’re breakin’ my heart.”

But he climbs up into the front seat and starts the car. Steve riffles through his tapes now since he didn’t get a chance to do it on the drive down. He finds what he’s looking for and pops in _For Those About to Rock._ Billy glances at him but doesn’t question the choice. Steve doesn’t quite know all the words yet, but it’s still good for nodding along to, and it feels good to share that with Billy.

By design, they get back to the middle school well before the dance is over. Billy parks a few spaces away from Steve’s BMW, and the two of them sit side by side on the trunk. Steve stares out at the trees, letting his mind wander in the comfortable silence. Billy gazes up at the stars.

“You really can see ’em better out here.”

Steve turns his head to look at Billy where he’s laid out against the back window with an arm folded under his head like a pillow. It’s cold out tonight, but everything about Billy looks warm. The soft light hits him like the last glowing coals of a fire, and his hair fans out like a crooked crown around his head. The soft line of this throat that always runs a little hotter than the rest of him looks even more delicate than usual.

Between the faint orange glow from the lampposts outside the school and the deep blue paint job of his car, he looks like something that washed up onto the shore of a beach at dusk. Steve wants to kiss him.

“You’re staring, Steve.”

“I’ve seen the stars a hundred times.”

“You ever really look at ’em,” Billy asks, “or do you just see a bunch of dots?”

“That’s not what you see?”

Billy cuts a glance over to him, a smile flickering over his mouth. Steve wants to kiss him so badly.

“You see straight up above us? Those three stars next to each other?”

Steve follows Billy’s hand where he’s pointing. “Yeah, so?”

“Follow ’em up, then back down. See how they kinda make an hourglass shape?” Billy waits for Steve to confirm that he sees it. “Okay, now up on the left, picture that’s an arm pointed straight up. Then on the right, that whole row of stars? That’s a bow. You see it?”

It takes Steve a minute, but he sees it. “Is there a head I’m not seeing?”

“Up a ways from the shoulders.”

“Oh, yeah, right above the hourglass. That’s pretty cool.”

“That’s Orion,” Billy tells him. “Over here he’s got his two dogs, Canis Minor up there and Canis Major down here.”

“If that one’s Major, why is it below the other one?”

“Because of that star right there — you see it? The really bright one? That’s Sirius. It’s the brightest star there is, and Canis Major’s got it like a rabbit between her teeth.”

“Her?” Steve asks, smirking.

“Fuckin’ deadlier of the species. You never heard that?”

The star in question is pretty bright, now that Billy mentions it. Steve’s never really noticed. He’s heard of sailors using star maps to navigate the sea, and he knows there’s supposed to be a way to follow the North star, whichever one that is, but he’s never gone out and tried to put any of that into practice. He’s not surprised Billy can pick out constellations from memory. Steve knows by now that he’s smart.

“You ever think about being an astronaut?”

“No,” Billy scoffs. “Why?”

“I don’t know, sounds kinda neat. Seeing what’s out there. Looking down at the world from that far away.”

“I’m good with where I’m at. I like being close enough to touch.”

Steve laughs at Billy’s smirk. “Not much for wandering either, are you?” He pauses, seeing the thought behind Billy’s eyes that he won’t voice, even though he wouldn’t have hesitated a few short months ago. “Guess I can’t really say the same.”

“ _I_ kissed _you_ ,” Billy reminds him, slowly, carefully, his eyes going unreadable again. “Look, I wanted you to invite me up that night, but you didn’t. Not for a lack of tryin’ either. I gave it my best shot.”

Heat rises in Steve’s face. He whispers, “I wanted you to,” like a confession because that’s exactly what it is.

Billy furrows his eyebrows like he’s confused. Like he genuinely doesn’t understand what Steve’s saying, and maybe he doesn’t. He’s gotten nicer — softer — since Halloween, but he’s still not one to miss out on an opportunity to brag, which this could be, definitely.

“What did you want?”

“For you to kiss me again,” he says, a little ashamed of that part, and rightfully so, he thinks.

Seeming to catch sight of how he’s feeling, the complicated emotion goes out of Billy’s face. He rolls his eyes and lies back to look up to the sky again. “Say I had then, and say you liked it. You’d’ve flaked and said no anyway, and that would’ve been the end of it,” he says, casually dismissive.

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s what you did. It’s my fault I pushed it as far as I did. I thought that was part of it, but then you really didn’t want to, so we didn’t. And we wouldn’t have, even if I’d kissed you again.”

“But — ”

“No. You think that’s what I wanted? To trick you into saying yes to me?”

“Well, no, but…” Steve stammers. He remembers how Billy’d stopped as soon as Steve squirmed out of reach. “ _No_ , but then you got all… like, you clammed up and got upset.”

“Thought you were jerking me around. You sent your ride home, and then you wouldn’t leave. I thought you just wanted to hook up and go back to your pretty little girlfriend like it never happened, and I was ready to take whatever I could get and bail. I thought you wanted that, too. But all that shit you started saying? About being with one person? The way you are, it was never gonna go down the way you’re thinking.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Steve asks, trying to figure out if he should feel flattered or not.

“It means you dote on me, and I know you doted on her, too, all right? So you’d’ve done fuck-all but give me blue balls that night no matter what. Thanks for those, by the way.”

“I’m not sorry for your blue balls. You brought those on yourself.”

“Oh, did I? Really?” Billy asks, laughing. “I shoulda knocked your ass out and saved myself the trouble, is that it? You wanted a fight so bad, why didn’t you just hit me? ‘Stead of rolling around on the ground with your fingers in your mouth. Do you have any idea how confusing that shit was?”

His face burns hot. “Oh, my God, you say that like I was putting on a show for you or something.”

“That’s what it felt like! Fuckin’ cocktease,” Billy mutters, looking up at the stars again.

Steve lays back against the rear window next to Billy and watches the stars wink, simmering at that word in Billy’s mouth. It’s not supposed to be a compliment, but why not? He likes knowing that he gets Billy’s dick hard, and that’s what it means, right? _Cocktease_.

A ribbon of warmth uncurls low in his belly. He bites his lip, and it does nothing to impede the spread of his smile.

“What?” Billy asks, rightfully suspicious.

“Cocktease,” Steve whispers, grinning. He has fucking butterflies in his stomach. He laughs straight from his stomach, delighted at the tormented look on Billy’s face.

He buries a groan into his hands. “You’re a menace.”

“Aww, Billy,” Steve titters, cackling when Billy jabs him in the ribs with his fingers. _“Billy, no!”_

“I take back what I said about you doting on me,” Billy says, trying his best to look grumpy and succeeding not a bit.

“No, you don’t. _Haaah!”_

“No, I don’t,” Billy grumbles, twisting back around to lie on his back.

“You really think I dote on you?” he asks, still giggling breathlessly.

“Yeah, because you do. Trying to take me out on dates all the time? Defending me to your little battalion of geeks? Defending me in general? To everyone?”

“That’s all pretty basic boyfriend stuff, Billy.”

“Maybe for you,” he counters quietly. “I get it. Being honest about what you want doesn’t knock you on your ass, but do you think everybody has that? You think everybody’s as brave as you?”

“You’re here,” Steve reminds him, smiling now.

Billy shakes his head, but he smiles, too. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“You really — like, you never thought anyone would make you their first choice?”

“Anyone done that for you lately? Stood their ground and said _fuck no_ when the smart thing to do was take off?”

“You did.”

Billy blinks at him. The questions _what_ and _when_ form on his face but don’t quite reach his mouth. Steve helps him remember.

“Actually, what you said was, _fuck that,_ and then you followed me out to fight some fucking dogs.” He puts his hand on Billy’s jaw to keep him from looking away. “You saved my life, and you were right there with me when they almost came into the bus.”

“Yeah, and then I ran,” Billy mumbles.

“ _You came back_. If you hadn’t, we would’ve been stuck at the house, and who knows how the thing at the lab would’ve gone down. Billy, like, you’re allowed to not have it together a hundred percent of the time. Just because you need a second, it doesn’t mean you’re weak or whatever. I ran, too, the first time I saw one of those things, and then I went back. Because I had to. Just like you did.”

The frown on Billy’s mouth touches all of his face in that rare way it only sometimes does. In the beach-dusk light from the lampposts his eyes look the way they did in the car that first night, flint-dark and painfully honest like Billy can only sometimes force himself to be.

Steve wants to hold on to him until Billy believes in what he’s saying, and he wants to kiss him. God, he wants to kiss him. He wonders if that would be all right, or if Billy would panic and push him away. The way he feels right now and the way Billy’s looking at him, it has to be.

“Billy.”

“What?”

Steve touches Billy’s face and his broken crown, feels himself leaning in. “Billy…”

“What, Steve?”

The soft whisper is what does it for him. Steve bends down to do it, but he stops at pressing his forehead to Billy’s. He knows how particular Billy is about not doing this stuff in public, just in cast anyone sees. Just in case it gets back to his dad somehow.

“Can I kiss you?”

He’s barely gotten the question out when Billy tilts his face and gives him the answer they both want. Billy sinks a hand in his hair, slow and intentional, like he never wants the moment to end. An answering sweetness spreads low in Steve’s belly, the feeling he always gets when Billy touches him like this, when Steve can tell he’s trying to make it last forever. A thought stirs in the back of his mind, pieces of a melody and then a fragment of lyrics, a song he heard while sorting through his many records.

 _Like the trembling heart of a captive bird_ …

Billy drops his head back, and Steve goes to follow him, kissing him soundly again and again until Billy’s smiling against his lips. Once he’s earned that, Steve pulls away to look. It’s a great smile Billy’s got, when he means it.

And then a car door slams, and Billy shrinks, heaving himself off the car in the time it takes Steve to sit up and squint in the direction it came from. Across the parking lot he sees Hop and Mrs. Byers. Looks like they’re arguing, so maybe they only just pulled up and haven’t noticed Steve sprawled out on the back of Billy’s car yet. That doesn’t slow Billy down. He’s already climbing back in behind the wheel and pulling the door shut behind him. Steve pushes off the trunk, waves when Hop and Mrs. Byers glance over in his direction, and ducks down by Billy’s window.

“Hey, I don’t think they saw. They’re not acting like they did anyway.”

“Whatever,” Billy mumbles, both hands firmly gripping onto the wheel. “You should get back to your car before everyone else gets here.”

Steve sighs and straightens out. He’s been having variations of this conversation with Billy ever since they first started seeing each other, and he knows by now when Billy’s in a mood to hear him out and when he’s not. This happens to be one of those times when he’s not. It was a big enough leap getting Billy to kiss him where anyone might see, so he’s not gonna press his luck.

Especially now that he knows what it cost Billy the last time he got caught doing that in public.

It’s another ten minutes before parents start showing up and _another_ _half hour_ after that before kids start flooding the parking lot.

Steve passes the time trying to remember the song he thought of when he was kissing Billy. He sort of remembers which record it was on, so there’s that at least. Maybe Dustin will know which one it is so Steve won’t have to tear through his collection later trying to find it. He’s keeping an eye out for Henderson, but Max is the first kid he spots. She stands out in a crowd anyway with that hair, but she’s got a definite presence about her, too. It’s pretty cool seeing kids part to let her pass. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think she and Billy really were related.

Steve sights Dustin next and waves an arm out the window to catch his eye. He makes a dash for the car and buckles in, grinning ear to ear.

“Whoa, someone had fun. What happened? Tell me everything.”

He waves his hands around. “I got to dance with Nancy, Steve! It was _awesome!_ ”

“That does sound awesome,” Steve says, surprised but smiling anyway. He backs out carefully out of his spot and starts driving. “I bet you made quite the pair.”

“We did. Not to brag, but I always knew we’d look good together. And if that wasn’t amazing enough, I got to dance with _Kali_ , too!”

“Oh, wow. She went?”

“Well, I mean, anywhere El goes, you know?” Dustin weighs his hands. “She looked so pretty. She always looks pretty. El looked nice, too, and Nancy — what is it about dances, Steve? _They were all so pretty_.”

Steve snorts. He remembers feeling like that at his first school dance. He doesn’t ask if Max looked pretty, not now that he knows she likes Lucas. Besides, Steve saw her and he knows she went out looking like a tiny movie star.

“What about you?” Dustin asks, breathless still from talking so fast. “How was your date with Billy? Did you have fun?”

“Yeah, it was nice.”

That’s really an understatement, but he can’t get into the specifics with a kid. Dustin seems to hear that entire thought and looks at him.

He says, “Nice?”

“You know, we, um, talked.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Henderson. It’s a big part of getting to know someone. Figuring out who they are, y’know?”

That seems to sink in for him. He nods thoughtfully, allowing it. “Okay, yeah.”

“So… ‘Kali always looks really pretty?’” Steve says, looking at Dustin from the corner of his eye.

He rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning and hilariously close to swooning. “Yeah, obviously. Especially when she’s threatening arson.”

Steve opens his mouth and shuts it. Opens it again. He closes it one more time and shakes his head.

“Arson’s when you deliberately start a fire, Steve.”

“Yeah, actually, if you can believe it, that’s not the part I’m hung up on.”

He waves his hand vaguely. “You know, it’s just… middle school. It’s hard on everyone.”

“Fair point.”

“Tonight was so much fun. I’m glad you had a good time, too.”

“Thanks, Henderson. Oh, hey, maybe you can help me out with something. What’s this song? Um, the earth moved… Like the trembling heart of a captive bird…” He trails off, trying to find the melody.

Dustin’s eyes light up. “Roberta Flack! Steve, that’s… super romantic.”

Steve rolls his eyes and pulls up outside Dustin’s house. “What’s it called?”

“Are you singing that for Billy? You should totally sing that for Billy. Does he like stuff like that? Who am I kidding, everybody likes stuff like that.”

“Henderson, the song.”

He sighs and opens his door, taking care to enunciate. “ _The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face_.”

“Roberta Flack,” Steve repeats.

Dustin shuts his door and looks at Steve through the open window. “Yep! It’s pretty. You should learn it.”

“ _Goodnight_ , Henderson.”

“Goodnight, Steve!” he chirps, backing away and jogging up the driveway.

Steve waits for him to disappear into the house before driving off. He tries to remember if he has the record or if it was one of Mom’s. He’ll have to check when he gets home. He thinks he will learn it for Billy.

Because Dustin’s right. Everybody likes stuff like that, and any chance Steve gets to surprise Billy with something sweet, he takes it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~Happy birthday to me!  
> ~~Happy birthday to me!!  
> ~~~Happy birthday, tiny Adri!!!  
> ~~~~Happy birthday to me!!!!!
> 
> Ta, lads. <3


	24. A Fair Price

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy pre-Christmas chapter because that's in the spirit of Halloween, right

Eight days before Christmas, Bob sees Billy in at RadioShack looking at the tape decks with a deathly serious look on his face. Bob holsters his barcode scanner and makes his way over, smiling preemptively and walking loud enough to be heard on the tile. “Hey, Billy! How’s this for a surprise!”

Billy still startles at his approach, hands shoved down deep into the pockets of his jean jacket. Part of why he’s so jumpy might even just be because he’s cold. Anyone would be, wearing only that jacket.

“Hey. Didn’t know you worked here.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s my pride and joy. Good, honest work. Gettin’ technology into people’s hands and shrinking the world down just a little bit more every day. What’re you in for? Maybe I can help.”

“I need something to record music.”

“Neat! Well, as it happens, you’re in the right spot, and the Panasonics — that’s all these ones right here — are very reliable. I’ll warn you off Studebaker since those can be on the pricy side, same with Sony, but… oh! The interface on RCA tape recorders is super accessible, so if you’re shopping for a beginner, that might be more your speed. They’re pretty affordable, too.”

Billy holds up his hand, and that grim, unwavering look on his face hasn’t gone anywhere. He points at a Panasonic tape deck with one hand and over at an RCA tape deck with the other, saying, “So one of these two. That’s what you’re tellin’ me?”

“Either one would be the best bet for your money,” Bob confirms, nodding. “But if you gave me an idea of what you want outta your purchase, I could help you make a more informed decision. So what is it you’re trying to find?”

“Something…” Billy drops his hands and shoves them back into his pockets. “Something that’ll work really well and for a long time. Clean audio. I don’t care if it’s ugly, just as long as it does what it’s supposed to.”

Bob nods, checking off some of the flashier brands he knows won’t hold up to Billy’s scrutiny. “Okay. Durability and dependability. Then I think we’ll go with Panasonic for you after all. Portable or stationary?”

“Better go portable.”

“Good choice. Brings your cost way down,” Bob tells him. “Portable tape deck’s put you more in the range of fifteen to thirty dollars. What kinda budget are you working with here?”

“Don’t know yet,” Billy grumbles, looking away. “I was gonna get a price first and hawk some shit till I got what I needed.”

“Oh! What’d you bring to sell? Any electronics? I’d be happy to give you a fair price for ‘em.”

“Yeah, really? You do that here?”

“Sure, especially around Christmas,” Bob tells him with a wink. “Do you need help bringing anything in?”

“Can you get the door? I’m just parked around the corner.”

“Yeah, of course.”

Bob follows him outside and waits with the door open for Billy to make his way back. For the early hour, it sure is nippy out. They’re in for a real cold winter, looks like.

“Oh, jeez,” he breathes, holding the door wide open for Billy to pass through with a stereo.

Even just to look at it, it’s in pristine condition. He must’ve been taking great care of it for it to look so new.

“Thanks, Bob.”

“That must weigh a ton. You got it?”

“I got it. Where do I take it? Over to the counter?”

“Yeah, right up front, and I’ll run it to the backroom for an appraisal. Yep! Perfect! Why don’t you take another look around and see which ones you’re partial to. I’ll be right back.”

“All right.”

Bob runs the few cursory tests he runs for every buyback item that comes through the store. He checks for scuffs, dust accumulation, faulty wiring, all the usual suspects. The stereo’s a brand they sell from new all the time, so he can’t imagine it’ll last on the shelf long at any kind of discounted price. Bob’s sort of surprised any kid Billy’s age would part from something so nice, but the stereo’s lacking in functionality, for his purposes anyway. The best stereo in the world can never compete with a busted up tape recorder if the recording aspect is what a person’s after. Square peg, round hole.

There’s a checklist he has to go through every time he deals with trade-ins, and after scoring it up as honestly as he can, he comes up with a price that’s considerably higher than any of the tape recorders Billy’s been looking at.

If there’s a huge discrepancy between what the stereo’s worth and what Billy walks out with, Bob’ll be sure to send him off with store credit to cover the difference. He writes the amount down on a notepad, tucks his pen into a shirt pocket, and walks back out to the sales floor to find Billy. He’s where Bob left him but a ways down the aisle reading the box for a bright red reel-to-reel player.

When he notices Bob walking over, he returns it to the shelf and asks, looking really nervous all of a sudden, “So how much am I lookin’ at here?”

“Well, Billy. You can afford just about anything you want.” He tears the page off his notepad and hands it to Billy, smiling at how big his eyes get. “Do you like that red one you were looking at?”

Dazed at the concept of more money in his hand than he was expecting, he murmurs, “Steve likes red,” and then, hearing what he’s just said, proceeds to turn a very bright shade of it.

“So it’s a gift!” Bob remarks, pleasantly surprised. He’s sorry Billy has to sell something of his own to make it happen, but he understands. He remembers being young and having no money unless his parents gave it to him, and — well, that’s just it, isn’t it? “That’s so thoughtful, Billy. I’m sure he’ll like anything you pick, but we can definitely narrow it down to make it an easier decision. I know you mentioned sound quality, and these models are really good on that front.”

He excoriates the lot of them with his eyes and says, “Too many buttons.”

“Okay, great! We’ll steer clear of those then.”

They negotiate the costs and benefits to each model Billy likes, and by the time they whittle those down to just two, Bob gives him the sticker amount for the lightly used model. It’s not even half what he made on his stereo, and he can easily afford it, a pack of compatible batteries, and four extra reels of recording tape besides. And they have it in red, which is a nice bonus.

“So after tallying everything up, you’ll have a bit left over. Unless you want to keep browsing?”

Billy casts a glance around the empty store. Business picks up a lot around the holidays, but there’s always a lull right around lunchtime. If they finish up before the top of the hour, Bob might see if he can steal Joyce away for a quick bite at Pauline’s. He’s dying for one of their roast beef sandwiches.

“How much do those go for?” Billy asks, hooking his thumb over his shoulder at something up on a far shelf. “And do you got ‘em from used?”

Laughing, Bob tells him, “Y’know, Billy, for you, I’m gonna check in the back. Stay right there.”

It turns out they do have the second item from used and for a really good price. Billy has to put back two reels of the recording tape, but he’s still got plenty to get started.

“Gosh, Billy. This is gonna be the best Christmas ever. Good for you.”

Billy nods somberly at his haul, saying, “Thanks for your help.”

“Of course. See ya in here again!”

Bob tidies up the store a bit before locking up to go and grab Joyce from Melvald’s. He can’t wait to tell her about his star customer.

* * *

Four days before Christmas, Steve walks into RadioShack with a complacent little smile on his face and his jacket zipped all the way up to his throat. It’s even colder out today than it was when Billy came by, but he’s definitely dressed for it more than Billy was.

“Hey there, Steve!” Bob calls from the register. “Gimme just a sec, and I’ll be right with you!”

“Cool, thanks!”

It’s not a big transaction, but this store sees a lot of business from the Tenches thanks entirely to Roy’s tech-savvy son. Since he’s actually here in person today, Bob jumps on the opportunity to tease him about it while he’s ringing his dad up.

“Just couldn’t wait till Christmas, huh, Andy?”

A smile right out of Hollywood breaks across his face. He shifts his weight between his arm crutches and leans to one side with an ease Bob couldn’t imitate if he tried. Judging the distance perfectly, Andy nudges his dad with his shoulder, saying, “It’s not technically a Christmas present, is it, Pop?”

Roy huffs a beleaguered sigh. “Already said I didn’t know pressin’ that button was gonna burn through all your precious whatever-the-heck…”

“Data, Father,” Andy tells him, enunciating for his benefit. He’s a handsome kid, especially when his eyes get all bright with laughter. “I do appreciate the steps you’re taking to convert to digital. Better your report cards take up the old Commodore than the dinner table any day.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Okey doke! You’re all set, Roy,” Bob says, favoring him and then Andy with a smile. “The 1531 oughta hold you over for a little while.”

“Fingers crossed. Sacrificing speed for value here, but who can even afford the -41 nowadays?”

“Son,” Roy sighs, putting away his wallet. “I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about getting outta here,” Andy says, light as air and smiling still just like he always had been. “What’re you talking about?”

Roy shakes his head, but there’s a smirk pulling at the edge of his mouth. He claps a hand on his son’s shoulder and steers him handily toward the door, every bit as graceful in his handling of the crutches as his son is. Andy twists around mid-stride to grin at Bob and call out a parting farewell.

Bob chuckles and holds his hand up in a wave. “We’ll see ya again! Need me to get the door?”

“I got it!” Steve calls out, stepping out from behind a shelving unit near the front of the store. He spots Andy and waves. “Oh, hey, Andy! Hi, Mr. Tench.”

“Hi, Steve!”

Oh, yeah. Andy’s a few years past graduation himself, but he’s got a job at the library in the high school, putting him close at hand to his dad who’s been teaching math there for the past five years or so ever since they moved to Hawkins. Makes sense Steve would recognize him.

The alarm over the door goes off, and Steve yelps, hopping back inside with a box held high over his head. Bob hears Andy laughing before he gets through the door, and after he and his dad have gone, Steve meets Bob halfway to the register.

He shrugs, a little red in the face. “Sorry for setting off the alarm.”

“It’s okay, Steve. That happens more often than you’d think. Were you looking at anything in particular? Something I can help you with?”

“Actually, yeah. Billy’s coming over on Christmas,” he says, so earnestly that Bob feels it in his chest. “We didn’t _say_ we were doing presents, but I really wanna get him something cool. I thought maybe, like, some really nice headphones? Or I dunno.”

“Headphones,” Bob repeats, remembering Billy’s stereo that sold the same day it hit the shelves. “Okay.”

Steve winces, misunderstanding. “It’s lame, isn’t it? Ugh, I knew it.”

“No, it’s — very thoughtful, but… you wanna get him something he’ll find useful, right? Something special.”

“Yeah,” he answers gamely.

“So what does Billy like? Let’s start there.”

“Uhh, the ocean? Taking off in his car, guessing how movies end… he also really likes memorizing words and saying them back. But like, in his own way? So it sounds like he’s thinking it and not like he read it in a book somewhere.”

_“A theater kid,”_ Bob notes, grinning. “Oh, wow, I never would’ve guessed. Wait! Oh! I have just the thing!”

“Yeah? Really?” Steve asks, following Bob obediently to the CD players. He huffs a laugh. “Billy’s gonna hate that you called him a theater kid.”

“It’s a compliment! Okay, so we’ve got tape decks on the other wall if you’d rather go that route, but for what I’m thinking, CD format might be less cumbersome. Oh, I should ask — what kinda budget are we lookin’ at here?”

Steve stares at him, face not changing a wink. “Budget?”

Bob stares back, nodding slowly. “Okay, so we have these CD players here…”

He goes over the features each brand can boast, but he gets the sense after the third or fourth product description that Steve’s not really retaining the information. That’s probably Bob’s fault. He knows he gets overzealous when it comes to the sales pitch.

Changing his strategy, he says, “We basically move from affordable to high-end as you approach the end of this section.”

“So what about… this one?” Steve asks, grabbing a box seemingly at random. “Billy likes blue.”

Bob stops for a second to just — really deeply, gratefully — appreciate the way the universe sometimes works out, and how certain people under certain circumstances are lucky enough to meet and find out they care about each other. He nods, trying not to smile quite as much as he really wants to, and says, “Good choice, Steve.”

“So, just this? I mean, it’s cool and all, but his car only takes cassettes, and I don’t know if he even has CDs, but… he does listen to music mostly in his car anyway.”

“I had something a little different in mind. Now, we don’t carry them here, but the library will have a lot of books — even productions written for the stage — recorded on CDs. You can borrow them for free as long as you have a library card.”

“Whoa. Do you think they’ll have like, Shakespeare or whatever?”

“I have it on good authority that the works of Shakespeare were among the first to have been recorded as audiobooks. You’ll have your pick of the bunch, and so will Billy.”

“Huh, that’s good thinking, Bob.” Steve flashes a grin, holding up Billy’s prospective Christmas present. “I want the headphones, too, though.”

Bob ambles over to the checkout counter while Steve goes to pick out the headphones he was looking at when he set off the alarm. It’s a pretty impressive gift, to say nothing of the cost, but Steve doesn’t seem worried about it. He just hands over the money and smiles easily, throwing in a wave for good measure.

“Thanks, Bob!”

“Sure. See ya again, Steve. Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas!” Steve calls over his shoulder over the jangling bells on the door when it swings open.

Oh, man.

Bob checks his watch. He can’t wait to tell Joyce about this either.


	25. For Keeps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's October 11th Merry Christmas I love you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please do yourself a favor and picture Anne Hathaway and Sebastian Stan as the Harringtons (tm) because I do what I want

Halfway to Steve’s house, Billy pulls over on the side of the road and moves all the shit out of the trunk to wrap it. He didn’t like his odds making off with Susan’s leftover wrapping paper, and he didn’t think it was worth getting Max in trouble to ask her to sneak it to him, so all he’s got is week-old newspapers his dad never got around to throwing out. It’ll work in a pinch, and good thing, too. The last time he wrapped presents he was seven, and he made a goddamn mess of it.

It was worth it for how Mom smiled at him, but he still can’t wrap presents for shit. He tears the paper twice trying to get it to sit right over the corners with shitty results. He knows there’s supposed to be a trick or a special fold that’ll keep the paper from sliding around, and he’s positive she showed it to him, but he can’t remember.

Does he tape one side to the actual box? Is that the secret? He gives it a try.

“Fuckin’ A,” he whispers, grinning a little when he tugs and the paper doesn’t budge.

The tape recorder’s the smaller of the two boxes, so he only wastes one of his four newspapers figuring out a passable wrapping technique. By the time he starts on the second bigger one, he’s got little ribbons of tape hanging off the edge of the steering wheel ready to be applied and nice, crisp corners on both of Steve’s presents.

“Hell yeah. Look at that shit,” he whispers to himself, pleased. “Comin’ for your ass, Steve Harrington.”

He sets the second wrapped box carefully in the passenger’s seat, stacking them so they won’t jostle too much as he drives. One rogue piece of tape flattens to the steering wheel as he’s plucking the rest of them off. He scrapes the corner of it off with a fingernail before it sticks completely.

A chill shakes all the way down his spine, and he brings his hands to his face, cupping them around his mouth to blow on his fingers. Wouldn’t be having this problem if he’d left the car running, but he was enjoying the quiet without the purring engine throwing him off it.

He presses his icicle fingers under his collar and flinches at how cold they are. His skin’s warm at least, but _God._

New York City in the wintertime is gonna fucking kill him if he gets into NYU. He doesn’t know how he even let Steve convince him he should apply there, of all places, but he did, and Billy’s gonna freeze to death. Ugh.

He invents a few more reasons to stay right where he is, but his watch beeps at him a quarter to 8, and he’s all outta excuses. Time to put up or shut up.

Suddenly self-conscious and second guessing the whole thing, he looks over his handiwork again. Heat chokes his throat thinking about Steve in his big house with his new clothes and his thirty dollar hairspray, and Billy selling his stereo just to have gifts for him but not having enough leftover to spring for some shiny paper with candy canes on it.

The shredded up newspaper on the floor of the passenger’s seat makes him feel like he’s just left a ticker tape parade and tracked scraps in with him from the street. A memory of his dad, cruel and vivid, cuts through him like ice water.

_You think there are parades in Small Town, Indiana?_

“Don’t fuckin’ do this now, man,” he mutters, starting the engine and fiddling with the vents to distract himself. “Don’t.”

The car’s still spitting out cold air when he pulls out in the direction of Steve’s house. Just as well. He’d be tense regardless, so it hardly matters that he’s gritting his teeth to keep from shivering.

“They’re not tacky. He’s not gonna notice, or say anything,” Billy mumbles under his breath. “Bob said everything looked awesome. Who cares about the fuckin’ outside…”

The presents are really the least of his concerns. They’re just the easiest thing to fret over. Easy, in comparison to the other thing that’s happening tonight. In ten minutes, Billy meeting Steve’s parents. He checks his watch, swears, and steps harder on the gas. Five minutes.

Steve hadn’t acted like he was worried, so he must really not be, but Billy can’t wrap his head around it. Does he ever worry about anything, that guy? What the fuck.

Billy’s still fighting off his feelings of inadequacy when he pulls up outside Steve’s house. There’s a second BMW parked in the driveway, cream-colored and shinier than Steve’s by far. At first Billy thinks it’s a newer model, but the numbers on the back start with 3 and not 7 like Steve’s. Still, can’t be much older, can it? Simmons would know. Maybe he’ll ask her later.

It doesn’t occur to him that he’s been sitting in his car staring blankly out the windshield until the door to the house swings open and Steve steps into view. He’s got on a chunky wool sweater and jeans over thick white socks. He waves for Billy to come to the door, rubbing the back of his leg with his foot. Billy makes a noise like air coming out of a tire and stacks the presents in his arms. Put up or shut up.

“Hey! I got you stuff, too! Awesome!”

“You didn’t have to,” Billy says, and then cringes at himself.

Steve just grins and holds the door for him. He closes it behind Billy, holding his hands out right away to take the boxes off his hands. Still smiling, he says, “I’ll put ‘em next to yours under the tree.”

Billy watches him go, dazed. A woman breezes out of the kitchen then, and Billy’s feet turn to stone. She looks so much like Steve, from her beaming brown eyes to her generous, whole-hearted smile. She comes right to him and reaches for both his wrists. Her hands are warm. All of her, just like Steve, is warm, warm.

In an accent Billy can’t place right away, she says, “Well, you must be Billy Hargrove. I’m Jackie. So nice to finally meet you.”

“Thanks for having me over, Mrs. Harrington,” he says, stiffly.

“Oh, you’re one of those,” she teases. “Suit yourself. Just don’t let me hear ma’am outta you.” She gives his hands a gentle squeeze and makes a hurt sound. “Lord above, you are chilled right to the bone. I’ll fix that for you, sweetheart. Dickie, come on out here and say hello to our guest.”

A man leans out of the kitchen, and good Christ, the jaw on him. He flashes a warm Paul Newman grin and holds his hand out for Billy to shake while Mrs. Harrington disappears around a corner. “Rick Harrington,” he grunts with an accent that’s similar to his wife’s but wider and slower. He shakes Billy’s hand briefly but vigorously. “Good God, son. You’re ‘bout frozen half to death!”

“Workin’ on it,” Mrs. Harrington calls, coming back around with a huge jacket. She’s already draping it around Billy’s shoulders when she says to Mr. Harrington, in a voice like sugar becoming caramel, “You don’t mind, do you, honey?”

“I sure don’t. How’s that, Billy?” He palms Billy’s shoulder through the jacket. “Any better?”

He flaps his mouth, not having an answer. Jesus, this isn’t what he was expecting.

Steve chooses that moment to come back from the tree, now with a bit of tinsel caught in his hair. He stares at the jacket Billy’s apparently wearing, and the look on his face is — thrown. “Why didn’t I get you a coat? Oh, my God, I’m an idiot. I didn’t even think.”

“Quite all right, Steve. This ol’ one o’ mine rather suits him, I think. You keep that, Billy. Looks good on you, really.”

“He looks like a fighter pilot,” Steve says, frowning a little.

“Well, your daddy did go through a bit of a phase. Dickie here was just obsessed with aeronautics,” Mrs. Harrington croons, cuing Billy in on the joke with a hand on his remaining shoulder. “Even went out for his pilot’s license if you can believe it. That was Steve’s first time in an airplane, though we didn’t know it at the time.”

“This is very fun for me, just so you know,” Steve mumbles. “I’m not regretting the decision to have a friend over at all.”

“Why, darlin’, I think our child is embarrassed,” she muses, her hand still fluttering by Billy’s shoulder.

“Easy fix,” Mr. Harrington muses right back, taking his hand back to pluck at his sleeves, one after the other.

For a moment that feels slow and fast at the same time, Billy can’t breathe. He knows what that means when his dad does it, but before he can unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth to say something, Mr. Harrington’s got Steve in a headlock. He goes into it more dejected than afraid — not afraid at all because he’s not fucked up like Billy’s fucked up.

Because his dad’s not fucked up like Billy’s dad is fucked up.

“Come and let’s get you settled, Billy.” Mrs. Harrington says, holding her arm out for him to go with her into the kitchen that smells like pot roast. “Whoops, clumsy,” she laughs, catching the coat when it starts to slide off his shoulder.

He glances over his shoulder out the open doorway, just barely hearing Steve groan plaintively, _“Dad!”_

“Now, Son, you know better than that.”

Steve sighs loudly and struggles for a beat. Then, sagging, he grumbles, “Uncle.”

“Bit of a boy himself, isn’t he,” Mrs. Harrington muses, rolling her eyes but still just smiling that smile Billy knows so well. “Not you, though, eyes that serious,” she teases, pulling out a chair for him to sit. “You feel okay, honey?”

He nods, baffled. “Thanks, Mrs. Harrington.”

Her eyes gleam then, like trying to ease him out of his manners so he’ll call her by her first name is gonna be a fun game for her. An impossible joke sits on the back of his tongue about what it took for him to get there with Steve. 

But he can’t say that.

As much as he’s got a crazy sneaking suspicion that she’d love to see him break character, he wants to make a good impression tonight. That’s important, isn’t it? With family? Billy’s never met a guy’s parents before. And shit, that’s not even what today’s about. He needs to stop thinking that it is.

“Can I get you something to drink, Billy? Somethin’ to bring your color up a bit,” she offers.

“Sure, Mrs. Harrington. I’m not picky.”

Flashing another sugar sweet smile, she says, “I’ll just surprise you then,” and turns to go.

Steve falls wild-eyed into the seat next to Billy with his hair all wrecked to shit. That same strand of bright red tinsel clings just over his ear still. He looks at his dad’s coat on Billy’s shoulders with that hard-to-name, pinched expression from before on his face, and with a backward glance into the kitchen, he leans in closer, whispering, “You won’t wear my Letterman, but you’ll wear my dad’s coat? Really?”

“Your mom put me in it,” Billy coos back, hunching his shoulders so the coat rides up around his chin.

He gets a solid inhale of a distinctly male scent — cologne, spicier than the one he and Steve wear — but there’s something else, too. Sweet and smooth. Vanilla, maybe. It’s nice. He’s not used to feeling all swaddled up like this. Sometimes Max feels bold enough to hug him, or sometimes Steve will just hold onto him without trying to take it any further, but the constant weight and warmth of the coat closing him in feels — just, really good.

“Kinda like it,” Billy mumbles, a little dreamily. Too comfortable to be embarrassed.

Steve folds his arms over his chest, pouting, and Billy finally names it. He sits up a little in his seat, smirking, and watches his voice so he won’t talk too loud, even for the heat he puts into it.

Billy plucks the tinsel out of Steve’s hair and says, “I like when you get jealous, Steve.”

Steve stares at him, cheeks splotching up.

“Here you go, Billy. Steve, I got you a lil somethin’, too.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Harrington.”

“Dinner’s ‘bout ready, Jackie. Steve, you wanna lend me a hand in here?”

“Coming,” he says, taking a quick drink from his glass as he’s getting to his feet.

Billy starts to stand, too, but Mrs. Harrington glances archly at him and he sits right back down. Probably for the best.

As sluggish as he’s started to feel since sitting down and warming up, he doesn’t know how useful he’d be. He cups his hands around the mug she brought him and tries it, tasting apple, cinnamon, and maybe a bit of orange. A melted cloud of whipped cream floats over the top, coating his lip so he has to lick it away.

“Damn, that’s good,” he says, feeling heat unfurl in his chest when he breathes out.

“I’m happy you like it,” Mrs. Harrington tells him, sitting across the corner from him. “It’s an old family recipe. I never could make it without scorchin’ it, but it just works in Dickie’s hands.” Her smile is smaller this time but warmer for it, fonder. “Even better than my daddy used to make. Funny how life works out, isn’t it?”

He nods, hands wrapped around the base of the mug. “Yeah, funny.”

“Goodness,” she says on a breath, laughing in the smallest way, eyes bright like stars. “There’s an air about you. Guess that explains why my son likes you so much.”

“What d’you mean?” he asks, heart in his throat even though nothing about her expression says she’s coming for him in any kinda way.

She favors him with an enigmatic wink, musing, “A kite wants a wrist.”

His face gets hot, and he tries to hide it in the steam from his mug, taking another long drink. He sinks lower in the coat for cover and darts a furtive glance at Steve where he’s taking a tray of vegetables out of the oven.

_What the fuck,_ he thinks, but the usual cold doesn’t come to kill the warmth in his chest.

Steve and his dad start bringing serving dishes to the center of the table. Billy fiddles anxiously with his silverware, Mrs. Harrington smiling mysteriously all the while.

Once the table’s set, Billy tries to just focus on not dropping his fork. He sees Steve dipping into the spiked eggnog, but Billy sticks to apple cider and water. No matter how nice the Harringtons seem, and no matter how strangely seen he feels just in the first fifteen minutes, Billy’s not gonna risk getting sloppy and ruining everything all over again. Not if there’s a chance his bullshit might touch Steve and hurt him, too.

“So Billy,” Mr. Harrington says, kind of grandiosely, like it’s the beginning of a story. “Where’re you from? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I hear a bit o’ Valley in your accent.”

“You hear it?” Billy echoes incredulously. He reins himself in a little at the tickled look Steve gives him. “No way. You told him I’m from California.”

“I didn’t,” Steve insists, shoveling food into his mouth, not a care in the world.

“You’ll have to excuse him, Billy,” Mrs. Harrington croons with a pointed glance at her husband. “He can’t scrub the Tennessee from his accent no matter what he does, so he makes up for it by havin’ an ear for everythin’ else.”

“Tennessee,” Billy repeats, glancing at Steve who’s demolished his potatoes and left all his carrots behind. He carves into the roast to catch up. “You’re not from here originally?”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Harrington answers, neutrally enough that he can’t tell how she feels about the question, but then she adds, “No, I’m a Dallas girl, and Dickie’s from a tiny speck of a town smaller’n here. They ever get around to incorporatin’, baby?”

“Nope, and that’s how they like it. Can’t say I miss it down there in McNairy. Best thing I ever did was leave home for Chicago. That’s where Jackie and I met. Freshman Debate Club. Tell you what, Billy,” he muses, almost sighing his _w’_ s, “I never had my ass handed to me more thoroughly than the first time I squared off against this one in class. I knew right then and there.”

Always mystified that any two people can make it work and honestly _like_ each other, Billy says, “You married in college then?”

Spurred on by Mrs. Harrington’s full-throated laughter, Mr. Harrington snatches her hand up in his, flushed and grinning. He says, “Hell no, she wouldn’t gimme the time of day. S’pose I had growin’ left to do.”

“Mmhmm,” Mrs. Harrington hums, neatly biting a carrot off her fork. Laughing a little as she chews, she pauses to dab at her mouth with her napkin. Her lipstick doesn’t budge. “What about you, Billy? Steve mentioned you were interested in college. Do you know what you wanna go for?”

He shrugs out of the coat and carefully sets it on the back of his chair. “Not really. One of my teachers just kinda got me into it.”

“Billy’s gonna be an actor,” Steve offers, taking a big bite of the roast so he can’t be asked any follow-up questions.

“What?” Billy asks in the same moment that Mrs. Harrington gasps delightedly.

“You must invite us the very first time you perform onstage,” she gushes, honestly goddamn meaning it, apparently, as far as Billy can tell, at least. “I just know you’ll be wonderful.”

Steve tosses back a drink of water to hide the fact that he’s laughing, but Billy knows his game. He pulls up that smile he reserves for situations like this, the one he can normally trust to get him out of trouble, and leans into it. From the corner of his eye, he can see Steve put his glass down.

“Thanks, Mrs. Harrington. Might even be soon. My teacher says I’m the best she’s seen in a while.”

There’s a beat, and then Mr. Harrington’s laughing straight from his belly. Chuckling still, he muses, “Boy, I knew I liked you. Steve, I’m so glad. I never was too fond of that other boy you used to bring around all the time.”

Safe in the knowledge that he’s Steve’s first guy in anything, Billy’s grin comes easily. Steve kicks him under the table, little more than an insistent nudge of toes at his calf.

“You’ve seen Tommy like twice, Dad, and that was a year ago already.”

“You only gotta meet anyone twice to get their measure, baby,” Mrs. Harrington tells him, waving her last forkful of roast for emphasis. “First time’s for show; second time’s for keeps.”

Billy wonders if that’s true. He thinks back on how he met Steve at Nomura’s party talking shit, trying to get hit. Then later, well.

Maybe she’s right.

“So how’d you end up in Hawkins?” Billy presses, though he doesn’t have to. He’s just — warm for it. He knows they’ll tell him, if he asks, and he wants to ask. “I mean, Dallas, Chicago… Either one of those places sounds better than here.”

“Chicago,” Mr. Harrington hums, fond. “We did have a lot of fun there, didn’t we, Jackie?”

“Mmm, and we’ve got the mugshots to prove it.”

Billy looks at Steve with a question in his face. _“What?”_

“Yeah, you know,” Steve mumbles, waving his fork. “Sit-ins, protests, rallies.”

“Holy shit. Sorry! I mean…”

“You can see ‘em later if you like,” Mr. Harrington promises, warm, smirking a little. “We keep ‘em in the study over the fireplace framed up real nice.”

“Huh,” Billy mumbles. He hasn’t seen the study yet. Hasn’t seen much of any room with a door on it that’s not Steve’s or the bathroom. “Then did you live in Chicago before you came here?” he asks Steve.

“No, but we had a house in Knoxville,” Steve says offhandedly, swirling his short glass of eggnog, plate already halfway scraped clean. “I don’t remember it.”

Billy nods vaguely. “I lived a few other places, too.”

“Yeah? Really?” Steve asks, sitting up a little in his seat, as if Billy could say anything even half as interesting as the stories his parents could tell. “Where?”

“All over California, pretty much. This was the first time we went out of state.”

“You and your family, Billy?” Mrs. Harrington asks, smiling with polite interest, none of that mischief from earlier. “What are they like?”

“Mom…”

“It’s okay,” Billy tells him, waving him off. “My, uh… my dad remarried before we came out here, and she had a kid from a different marriage, so it’s four of us now.”

“Then it was just you and your daddy before?” Mr. Harrington asks.

Billy looks down at his plate, trying not to feel the pressure in his fault lines. The places in his skin where the seams of his scars pull taut and threaten to pop free. Under the table, Steve draws the top of his foot down Billy’s leg to hook behind his ankle.

Remembering how to breathe, Billy clears his throat and tries for a smile. “Since I was eight.”

“I’m sorry, Billy,” Mrs. Harrington croons, reaching for his hand on the table. “Difficult thing, to be without your mother.”

Another impossible answer sits on his tongue, and how could he say it? Why would he? She’s here now, and she’s kind and warm — Mr. Harrington, too — Billy doesn’t get it. Why aren’t they ever around? What could they possibly have going on that’s more important than this beautiful idiot sitting next to him? Billy’d never go anywhere without Steve if he could help it.

Jesus, this is why he can’t touch the hard stuff tonight. A gentle push in any one direction and he’s gonna start saying some real soft shit. He’s still trying to recover from the other night at the movie theater and the morning after. Fuck.

“Just wish I knew if she was doing okay,” he mumbles.

“I’m sure she feels the same way about you,” Mrs. Harrington soothes, and just like Steve, the way she leans in when she says it and how warm and soft her eyes get, she really means it.

Steve touches Billy’s leg with his foot again, lingering there, warm and constant.

Mr. Harrington clears his throat. “Well, then. Everybody satisfied?” He looks around at the empty plates. “Yes? All right, Steve, why don’t you help me clear the table, and we’ll see about tuckin’ into those presents under the tree?”

“I can help,” Billy offers.

“Billy can help!” Steve echoes, beaming at his parents. “You guys go ahead.”

“Such service,” Mrs. Harrington says, laughing when Billy scoops everything up into a neat, sturdy tower.

“Just don’t ask me to do the trick with the tablecloth,” he says, winking.

“Let’s go on and leave the boys to clean up, darlin’. We’ll be waitin’ in the den, you two.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Thank you for cooking, Mr. Harrington.”

“Oh, sure. C’mon, Jackie.”

Billy watches them stroll out of the kitchen together, elbows linked like they’re at a debutante ball or something. Unreal, how sweet they are, and how much they really just get along.

“They always like that?” Billy asks in an undertone, sidling in next to Steve to dry what he washes.

“Always like — ? Oh, I guess? I really only see them when they’re home since they stopped taking me on all their trips and whatever.”

Bumping his shoulder, Billy muses, “Like a tiny dog in a handbag?”

Steve snorts and hands off a dripping plate. Over the tap, he says, “Pretty much. My mom’ll break out the photo albums later if she’s had enough to drink. You’ll see. There’s all these pictures from before we moved and I had to start school.”

“The house in Knoxville?” Billy asks, mostly to have the name in his mouth so he won’t forget it.

“No, from like, all over. Or I mean, there’s a few of us at the old house, but a lot of ‘em I only know where we were from hearing the stories a bunch of times. It’s mostly just them looking invincible.”

“And a chubby baby _with the best hair.”_

“Yeah, I was a big baby,” he agrees solemnly, cracking a smile when Billy laughs. “No, I’m serious, I was born at like, nine pounds. There’s pictures of my dad with flowers in his hair carrying me on his shoulders once I was big enough to sit up. No idea how he did it.”

“’S not as hard as you think,” Billy murmurs offhandedly. “I bench two of Max, and there’s no way you were heavier than that. ‘Sides, your dad’s in pretty good shape. Back then…”

“Don’t start,” Steve warns, pointing a soapy finger at Billy’s face.

Billy goes back to drying a fan of forks, smirking. “Just saying.”

“Yeah, well, don’t,” he says, not mean at all, even smiling a little bit. “Jerk.”

Shrugging, Billy trades the forks for a serving spoon. Teasing still, he says, “Your mom, though — ”

“Oh, my God, Billy,” Steve complains, flicking his wet fingers so Billy gets a spatter of water in his face.

He’s laughing when the spoon slips out of his hand and hits the tile. The clattering of it strangles the sound in his throat. Steve’s dad pokes his head into the kitchen, and Billy’s stomach flips.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Harrington.”

Steve’s already snatching the spoon off the ground to wash it again. He doesn’t look up at his dad’s reappearance.

“That’s all right, son,” he croons, gentle. “Don’t look so vexed. I appreciate the help.”

“Here, Billy.”

He takes the spoon back, bewildered, and when he looks again, Mr. Harrington’s already ducked back out into the den. Steve bumps his shoulder, letting the water run while Billy fumbles to catch up. He keeps his eyes on what he’s doing and doesn’t allow himself to stray until he’s ready to take the next few dishes off Steve’s hands.

“Billy,” he says, soft.

“What?”

Seeming to take his cues from Billy, Steve focuses on scrubbing the baking sheet in front of him. Billy steps away to start putting away the things he’s dried. By the time he gets back to his post, Steve’s got the pan ready for him, and Billy’s methodical about toweling it dry, as if pouring all his concentration into it will keep Steve from saying whatever he’s about to say. It doesn’t, but Billy sort of knew that. It’s one of those things he’s started to learn about Steve, that he notices this shit and doesn’t like to let it go unspoken.

He’s a lot like Max that way. Go figure.

“Billy,” he starts again, leaning in just a little so their arms touch in one warm, unbroken line. “Nothing’s gonna happen.”

The back of his throat aches for a second, just one, and then he makes himself smile, sharp like knives and bitter like cigarette smoke. “Know what they say about old habits.”

“Yeah, they’re hard to break, but do you always do what you’re used to?” Steve asks, so genuinely curious that Billy has to pause. He gestures for the pan when Billy’s done with it and goes to tuck it into a low cabinet near the stove. “Thought all that music you listen to was about, like, rebelling and shit.” He comes back to the sink with a twinkle in his eye and adds, quietly, “That’s metal, right?”

Steve always does this. Finds just the right place to reach out and hold on so Billy won’t shake him off, even by accident. To make it about something outside of whatever’s tearing away at Billy from the inside. He ducks his head, choking back the burn in his throat.

“Hey, I get it.”

“Oh, you do?” Billy muses, looking up at him. Not to be mean, not to assume anything, but to invite him.

As often as Steve crawls nimbly and effortlessly into Billy’s head, Billy only sometimes knows what he’s thinking. He can usually guess at his feelings, but maybe that’s why it feels like they’re picking up and finishing each other’s sentences so much of the time.

“Well, no,” Steve admits a second later, huffing a laugh when Billy snorts at the broken tension. “No, I mean, I don’t _get it,_ but… I see why it’s like that for you. Why it had to be an instinct. Or I guess, why it has to be. But maybe there are… ways? To tell your instincts to back off when they’re not helping you. Like your breathing thing, right?”

Billy hums, taking the sponge out of Steve’s hand when it becomes clear that he’s not washing anything else. “You got something specific in mind?”

Steve stares into the middle distance for a second, making almost the exact face Nomura drew him with a year ago. Humming, he says, “When Barb was in the hospital, and right after, there was this song she would sing sometimes. Not loud or anything, not even really singing. She’d just say the words. It always looked like it helped her to calm down. I can ask her about it next time I see her. Maybe she’ll have better advice for how to deal with, like, bad feelings that come outta nowhere like that.”

He’s a sweetheart, Steve is. And he means it, through and through.

“Good idea,” Billy says, and God — _God_ — he wants to kiss him. Wants to lean over and press his mouth to Steve’s and feel his smile bloom.

“Yeah? Really?” Steve asks, beaming. “Cool! Remind me if I forget. She’d help anyway, but technically she owes me.”

“For what?”

“Lind — uhh… lin… -nens. Linens.”

“She owes you for linens,” Billy repeats slowly.

“Uh huh. Umm, Home Ec… stuff? Just casual — uh, casual linens.”

Billy narrows his eyes. He doesn’t mean to guess, but he ran into Barb Holland not too long ago at the arcade, and she’d said it, hadn’t she? That she was gonna meet Louder and that Steve set it up.

“Oh,” he murmurs, not letting on that he knows. “Rad.”

Steve nods, starting to smile again, and words form on Billy’s tongue. Words to say that thing he feels most, what he’s felt for a while now and hasn’t wanted to admit because there’s danger that way. But brimming over at the thought of how buoyant and sweet Steve is, that danger feels so far away it might as well not even be real.

Steve reaches for the pot in Billy’s hands and turns the water off. He angles his head in the direction of the living room, saying, “You wanna go hang out by the tree? I’ll be right there.”

“Yeah, okay,” Billy mumbles back, shaking, glowing, bleeding warmth out of every dark corner inside himself.

“I can bring you eggnog or something,” Steve calls over his shoulder. “You want some?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

He wanders out into the den where Mrs. Harrington is sorting through the presents, eyeing each box until she finds the one she wants. She tucks it close to her chest and turns to Billy, noticing him right as he walks into the room.

“There you are, Billy. Oh, good. Got your color back,” she coos, pinching his cheek, and Jesus, Billy thought Steve was joking about that part. “Come sit with me.”

He goes, looking across the way at Mr. Harrington so he won’t have to remember that time he fucked Steve on this couch. _God,_ this was a bad idea. This was _the_ _worst_ idea.

Mr. Harrington, for his part, doesn’t take any issue with being looked at. He tears his eyes away from the opened case of cigars he was poring over when Billy came in and gestures at Billy with the box from his cushy armchair, asking, “You ever try one of these, son?”

“No, sir.”

“You want to?”

“Dickie, really,” Mrs. Harrington purrs.

“Here, Mom,” Steve says, appearing in front of her with a tray of drinks like a waiter at a fancy restaurant.

She plucks a tumbler of rolling amber. “Thank you, baby.”

“Dad?”

He takes the other one. “Much obliged, Steve.”

“Here, Billy.”

“Oh.”

“The cider, if you want,” Steve tells him in an undertone, setting the tray down to take the eggnog he poured for himself. “I know you liked it.”

“Thanks.”

Steve ends up sitting on the floor next to his dad, and his mom stays right where she is next to Billy on the couch. It feels okay, mostly, especially once everybody starts tucking into their gifts. Where Billy had thought to be ashamed of his shoddy wrapping skills, he forgets to worry about it so much once Steve’s actually opening them. He should’ve known it’d be like that. The whole point of presents is that the paper comes off. The cardboard and plastic, too.

“What’ve you got there, Steve?” Mr. Harrington asks from around his cigar.

“Umm, it’s…” He peels back a wide strip of newspaper to reveal the Casio logo. He blinks at it for a second, then up at Billy. “Oh, shit, Billy.”

“Don’t keep us in suspense,” Mrs. Harrington laughs, leaning forward to see. “CasioTone! Oh, Steve, to go with your guitar.”

“Billy, thanks! This is so cool!”

“Play us somethin’ later,” Mr. Harrington suggests, warm and smooth just like the drink he’s sipping. “You and your mother can do that song she likes.”

“You play, Mrs. Harrington?”

“Not since I was a girl,” she muses, delicately unwrapping the gift she’d set aside for herself earlier. She peels back the shimmery red paper to reveal what looks like a blanket. It matches her dress perfectly when she drapes it around her shoulders. While Steve’s starting in on the second present Billy got him, she adds, just for Billy’s ears, “I have loved seein’ him pour his heart out into his music, though. Really lights him up like nothin’ else.”

“Whoa, is this what I… yeah, it is!” Steve says, tearing open the box for the tape recorder. “You even got batteries for it! Billy!”

“Well, son, I do believe you’ve won Christmas,” Mr. Harrington declares, amused and somber in the same beat somehow. He tips his chin Billy’s way. “Well played, Billy.”

His face goes warm, and he takes a long drink of the cider, hoping he can blame his reaction on the steam.

“Open yours,” Steve tells him, pointing. “It’s that one right there.”

Mr. Harrington finds the box for him and passes it over to Mrs. Harrington who passes it to Billy. It’s wrapped in the same deep red paper his mom’s present was in. Billy tugs the long edge out from beneath the tape, careful not tear it. He could; they are, but… it’s so nice, and he’s surrounded on every side by that difference, how nice it all is and how he feels like he’s classing the place down just by sitting on their couch in his best clothes.

He folds the paper back and doesn’t understand for a beat what he’s looking at. He has to flip the box around to see the label on the box. There’s a plastic case taped over top of it.

“You got me a CD player,” he says, plucking the case off so he can read it. “And… _Hamlet._ You got me _Hamlet?”_

“It’s — it’s like going to see a play. It’s acted out and everything, but it’s just the audio. I thought… I mean, ‘cuz that’s kinda your thing, right?”

“Yeah,” Billy murmurs, stunned, not knowing what to do with how he feels.

“Sorry it’s not — ”

“No, I like it. I like it, Steve. Thanks.”

“Oh,” Steve says, deflating slightly. His smile is relieved. “Okay.”

“Steve, why don’t you set up your things?” Mrs. Harrington suggests from beneath her shimmering gossamer shawl. “We can see about puttin’ together some music for these two.”

It doesn’t take long to get the tape recorder up and running, and firing up the Casio’s just a matter of finagling the battery pack open. Billy settles on the floor across from Steve with the coffee table between them, and they figure out how to get the preset sounds going. There’s one that sounds like a fucking polka or something, and Steve laughs until he’s red trying to sing AC/DC over it.

“Billy, this is awesome, I love it,” he squeaks out, knuckling the tears out of his eyes.

“You nerd, are you recording this?”

“Yeah, of course,” he gasps, laughing some more.

“Oh, my God, Steve.”

_“Pick up the phone / Leave her alone,”_ he persists over the goofy-ass preset. _“It’s time you made…”_ He tapers off into giggles again. _“It’s time you made a stand / For a fee, I’m happy to be / Your backdoor man! / Dirty deeds! Done dirt cheap! / Dirty deeds, and… they’re done… dirt cheap…”_

Over Steve’s desperate cackling, Billy groans, “I’m never playing you my music ever again.”

“No, Billy! Come on!” Steve presses a few buttons until the weird honking horns quit. He’s still chuckling a little, but he doesn’t mess with the other preset rhythms. “I’ll stop, I’ll stop! See?”

“That’s _your_ son,” he hears Mr. Harrington say to his wife, warm and teasing.

“It sure is,” she says back in the same tone.

Billy doesn’t understand how they’re allowed to have this or how parents like this can actually exist, but then, at the same time, he sort of gets that they don’t really exist. Not as parents. Not for Steve. Because they’re gracious and inviting and kind — _genuinely_ kind — and considerate, but they’re not here, and not just in the way where they’re globetrotters more than they’re homebodies. It’s in the way that they treat Steve more like an interesting houseguest than someone that they raised.

And it’s not just them. Steve’s got their patterns down and he knows how to move around the space they fill, and what to say, but he’s just as surface-level as they are.

So Billy plays along. It’s usually pretty easy to simmer and sparkle if that’s what he’s going for, and the Harringtons eat it right up. His strategy has the added benefit of making Steve look over at him every two seconds like he’s trying his hardest to memorize what Billy looks like, and that’s pretty awesome.

Steve plays a few more songs Billy doesn’t recognize, breaks out his guitar for an impromptu duet with his mom, and picks out another song his dad requests. At a lull in between songs, Billy cracks a joke about Steve being a walking juke box, and Steve looks at him full in the face and starts strumming gravely.

_“Standing in the rain with his held low…”_

“Oh, no.”

_“Couldn’t get a ticket / Was a sold-out show…”_

“Jesus,” Billy mutters, jumping to his feet and fleeing into the kitchen, just for Steve to pursue him, still strumming madly.

_“But the roar of the crowd / He could picture the scene / Put his ear to the wall / Like a distant scream / He heard one guitar! / Just blew him away!”_

“Okay! I get it!”

_“Saw stars in his eyes / And the very next day / Bought a beat-up six string / Secondhand store / Didn’t know how to play / But he knew for sure / That one guitar felt good in his hands / Didn’t take long to understand / That one guitar / Slung way down low / Was a one-way ticket / Only one way to go!”_

Billy glares at him, but really, he’s trying his hardest not to burst out laughing. Steve’s fucking face, God, he’s playing it _so_ straight.

_“That boy has got to stay on top / And be a juke box hero! / Staaaars in his eeeeeyes! / He’s a juke box heeeeroooo!”_ He bangs out a final resounding strum that rings out, mouth caught in an open grin Billy can’t help but match.

His parents are laughing in the other room, and Billy hears Mrs. Harrington say, “ _That’s_ your son.”

Billy glances around Steve into the den and hooks his finger in Steve’s collar, feeling— dangerous. He reels him in close, as close as he can, considering the guitar in his way. If it wasn’t there, he might lean in and do something stupid. As it is, he gets within about an inch of Steve’s mouth, both of them breathless with laughter and warm from food and drink and Christmas lights.

“Hey, Billy,” Steve whispers, some of the sharpness going out of his smile and burning up with something sweeter, softer.

“Hey, Steve.”

Steve hums, drops his gaze to Billy’s mouth, and drags it back up to his eyes. He bites his lip, smirking.

“What?” Billy smoothes two of his fingers over the line of Steve’s collarbone. He told himself he wasn’t gonna do anything to draw attention or get them in trouble tonight, but he can’t tear himself away, and he backed himself into a corner. Only way out is if he ducks Steve’s guitar or takes him out with the refrigerator door, but even he has to admit that would be kind of fucking dramatic.

Back to smiling, Steve says, “Look up.”

Billy does, and sighs, heavily. “Seriously?”

“Afraid so,” Steve sighs back, rolling his shoulders under the guitar strap. “Gosh, Billy, bad luck. The irony is my dad put this here so he could sneak up on my mom, but I’ve gotten more kisses than anybody else.”

“That’s because you’ve always got your head in there,” Mr. Harrington says, a little mournfully. “I’m about to be kissin’ both of you in a minute, ‘less you wanna get me some ice outta the freezer there, Billy. Or Steve, either one of you.”

Billy rushes to get it, hot all over, telling himself not to have a complete meltdown in front of Steve’s dad. Jesus Christ, he would’ve done it, too, if Steve hadn’t started talking about his mom.

There’s a joke in there somewhere, but hell if he can think clearly enough to come up with it.

“Thank you, Billy. You know what, son, I will take that kiss. Bring it in.”

“You smell like your cigars,” Steve groans, but he goes as limply as he went into the headlock.

Mr. Harrington ropes his arm around Steve’s neck and presses a dry kiss to his temple, mindful of the guitar. He draws back and says, thoughtfully, “It’s an acquired taste. Much like affection, I’m sorry to say. Or maybe it’s the aversion that’s acquired?” He looks up at Billy, expression soft, his arm still curled around Steve’s shoulders. “Sorry to interrupt you boys. Steve, if you wanna move your things into the game room, that’ll be fine with your mother and me. Billy, are you gonna be staying the night?”

“What— uh— well, I wasn’t— I’d hate to— impose,” he manages to say, somehow. He hadn’t wanted to go home, but he’d never let himself consider the alternative, not with Steve’s parents around. Then he hears that what he just said sounds a lot like he’s _hoping to be invited,_ and he quails. “I don’t mean that I want to, it’s just—”

“You’re more than welcome to stay,” Mr. Harrington replies, light as air and just as soft. “It’s comin’ down out there, and while I’m sure that beautiful Chevy of yours handles fine in snow, I’d just as soon not risk you. Put my mind at ease, won’t you?”

“Uh… okay?” Billy glances at Steve, uncertain, but he just flashes a wide smile and a double thumbs-up.

Turning to his dad, he says, “We’ll keep it down, Dad. Thanks.”

“Mmhmm.” He squints so the ice blue of his eyes are just slits. “C’mere, I ain’t done with you yet.”

_“Gah, Dad! This is embarrassing!”_

“I’m not embarrassed at all,” Billy drawls, just to be a dick, and predictably, Steve shoots him a testy little glare.

“Dickie, I told you puttin’ that thing over the fridge was gonna backfire on you,” Mrs. Harrington calls demurely from the den.

“What backfired?” Mr. Harrington calls back coyly, walking back out with Steve caught under his arm and squirming feebly. “You don’t wanna kiss this face?”

“Well, he _is_ irresistible, you’re right,” Mrs. Harrington agrees sweetly.

Billy sags against the fridge, listening to Steve’s parents take turns peppering him with kisses while Steve complains, loudly. Unreal, these people. Unreal.

He steps out from under the stupid mistletoe and makes himself walk back out into the den to meet the happy family. Steve’s just worming out of his mom’s arms, hair all gone to static from her sweater. He has a withering look of disapproval on his face that only deepens with the rash of red that creeps across his nose. He straightens out at the sight of Billy.

“Uh, the game room’s across from the kitchen. By the front door.”

“Don’t steal him away without lettin’ him say goodnight, Steve,” Mrs. Harrington chides, holding her hand out for Billy to go to her, and he does. She wraps his hand up in both of hers, smiling, all kindness and sincerity in those eyes she passed onto her son. “Finally warmed you up, didn’t we?”

“Sure did, Mrs. Harrington,” Billy muses, feeling his face get hot, but not in the way that makes him feel sick. He leans into it so it won’t scare him so much how she’s looking right into the centermost part of him. His opinion of her as aloof and detached has started to shift over the course of the night, and so has his take on Mr. Harrington.

He’s been wondering if it’s not actually that they don’t care, but that they don’t mind. When Steve told him nothing bad was gonna happen tonight, maybe that’s what he meant. Billy should’ve just believed him.

“Oh,” she whispers, putting her hand on his face right where he’s gone the warmest. “Those eyes. Steve, keep this one.”

“Workin’ on it,” Steve says offhandedly, scooping up his tape recorder so he can cradle it in one arm against his ribs. He hefts the keyboard in the other, guitar slung around behind his back.

“Billy, please take somethin’ off his hands before he goes and drops it all,” Mrs. Harrington croons, patting Billy’s hand before letting him go.

“You got it, Mrs. Harrington. You heard the lady. Give.” He takes the keyboard off his hands and salutes Mr. Harrington as he passes, pausing to shake his hand when he holds it out to him. “Goodnight, Mr. Harrington. Thanks for letting me stay the night.”

“Sure thing. Steve’ll have somethin’ for you to wear to bed. Yes, Steve?”

“Yes, Dad.”

Billy starts to follow Steve toward the front door but makes a detour into the kitchen to grab the jacket off the chair. He tosses it over his shoulder and jogs to catch up with Steve, who definitely focuses in on the jacket for a second before opening the door.

“I actually can’t believe you,” he says sulkily, but in a teasing kind of way.

“It looks good on me.”

“Anything would!”

Billy laughs sharply and presses the door shut behind him. He’s still laughing when Steve kisses him. The Casio jumps out of his hands, but Steve’s close enough that he catches it before it hits the ground. He huffs a sigh against Billy’s mouth, smiling so big Billy can feel it.

“For the mistletoe,” Steve reminds him, pressing a softer kiss under Billy’s eye. “House rules.”

“Yeah? Well, your dad got two,” he says, smudging the last of his words with his mouth on Steve’s. Fuck it, if Steve’s gonna kiss him, Billy can’t be faulted for giving back as good as he gets. Not when he’s wanted this since he saw Steve standing in his fucking socks waiting to welcome him into the house.

“Don’t talk about my dad when we make out,” Steve grumbles, tugging Billy by his belt loops further into the room. Somehow he’s still got the keyboard and the tape recorder balanced between his two hands.

Billy remembers then how he has a tendency to trip over any uneven surface and takes the tape recorder from him. Steve swings his guitar back around to the front and sets the Casio on the sleek, green felt pool table behind him. And then Billy realizes there’s a pool table.

“Oh, so this is like an adult game room,” Billy says, rather than saying what he’s thinking, which is just, _A fucking pool table, Steve?_

Steve looks at him over his shoulder, a stupid, gorgeous, cocky little tilt to his eyebrows. Billy rolls his eyes at him. He sets the tape recorder on the pool table next to the Casio and shrugs the jacket on over his shoulders so the sleeves hang loose. Steve falters where he’s standing the guitar up against the pool table.

“Just for that,” Billy teases, pulling the sides tightly around his front.

Sighing forlornly, Steve says, “Fine. I’m gonna grab another drink. Do you want one? Now that it’s just us?”

“Yeah, sure,” Billy mumbles, watching him go, and feeling— feeling. He grabs the guitar and sits on the floor with it laid sideways in his lap, the way he’s seen Steve do it. He plucks aimlessly at the strings, marveling at how effortlessly Steve can see music in steel and wood.

The guitar’s still in Billy’s lap when Steve gets back with the drinks. He’s got them balanced neatly on a tray like before and sets them in front of Billy on the floor. He takes the tape recorder down from the pool table to place it next to the tray, then he sits down across from him and takes a long drink, watching Billy test out chord shapes on the fretboard.

“You’re pretty good, Billy.”

“Nah, that’s you. I’m just dickin’ around.”

“I just dick around, too,” Steve murmurs, smiling easily. He takes another quick pull off the eggnog and presses the record button down so it sticks and the tape reels start turning. He leans forward and nudges one of Billy’s fingers up a string. “That shape right there’s everywhere in music.”

Billy looks at him, then down at the guitar. He strums down all the strings the way he’s seen Steve do it. The sound that rings out is smooth and resonant. Steve plucks the bottom two strings while Billy’s holding the chord, and bumps his fingers up a string each, beginning to sing, low and sweet.

_“I want a Sunday kind of love.”_ He taps Billy’s finger to hit the first fret and only plucks that string. _“A love to last…”_ He touches Billy’s fingers to coax him up to the bottom two strings with his ring and middle fingers. _“Past Saturday night…”_ He glances up, and Billy, catching on that there’s a pattern, follows the course Steve laid out for him. _“I’d like to know it’s more than love at first sight. / I want a Sunday kind of love…”_

Billy lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and Steve laughs, hushed, blushing.

“See? Easy.”

“Yeah, to you,” Billy says, just as quietly. “The whole song goes like that?”

“Mostly. I think there’s a key change near the end. Lots of songs do that, like a turnaround or whatever. To change it up.”

Billy drops his gaze to the guitar, pressing the tips of his fingers into the strings but not playing them.

“Oh, you… do you wanna play it together?” Steve asks, sitting up so his eyes, already bright, catch in the low lighting.

“You should just play it.” Billy holds the guitar out to him.

Steve pushes it back into his lap. “I liked how you were playing it.”

“But you’re recording,” Billy says, eyeing the turning tape reels distrustfully. “It’s not gonna sound good.”

“It’s gonna sound _better_ ,” Steve insists. “You really don’t wanna do it together?”

Billy waffles, pressing his lips together. He settles the guitar back across his thigh and reminds himself where the notes sit. He can’t remember just by looking what sounds they make, but he can at least hear when they’re right and when they’re wrong.

Steve waits for him to cycle through the notes for one full round before starting in on the words. Billy screws up the order every once in a while, but Steve’s perfect.

They play a few more songs like that, but Billy doesn’t know any of them. He doesn’t mind. Even if he can’t do much more than play two or three chords at a time or hum the chorus once he learns what it sounds like, he feels like he’s part of it.

Steve switches over to the guitar, and Billy takes to nursing his eggnog, just wanting to listen for a while. They down a few more at a pretty slow pace, and on Steve’s fifth or sixth eggnog of the night — this one suspiciously more booze than anything else — he gets the bright idea to mess around on the lyrics. Innocuous changes. Or well, one change. And it’s not innocuous at all. The little shit.

_“Billy’s arms, they are warm when he holds me,”_ he sings, continuing easily even when Billy chokes into his glass. _“Billy’s arms always comfort and console me / When I’m in his arms, held tight / I know everything’s all right / Just as long as I’m inside…”_ He wags his eyebrows, and Billy coughs wetly into his elbow. _“…Billy’s arms.”_

_“Stop,”_ Billy grits out, still coughing. “I’m dyin’ here.”

“Can’t have that,” Steve muses. He taps his chin, humming thoughtfully. “How ‘bout this one? _Billy, Billy / Ohh, with your eyes so blue / Billy, Billy / I’ve got a crush on you / Billy, Billy / I’m so in love with you…”_

Billy just stares at him, shaking his head. Apparently he didn’t waste his money that day Louder took him for everything he had at the record store.

_“Oh, when we walk / It always feels so nice / And when we talk / It seems like paradise / Billy, Billy / I’m so in love with you / You’re my king!”_ Steve belts out, and Billy laughs, but he wonders the whole time if Steve even knows how good he sounds, even just trying to be funny. _“And I’m in heaven every time I look at you!”_

He thinks Steve probably doesn’t know, and he decides right then and there, buzzing a little from the bourbon, that he’s gonna make sure that changes.

_“When you smile, it’s like a dream / And I’m so lucky ‘cuz I found a boy like you / Billy, Billy…_ uh—”

Steve stumbles over the next few lines, sort of muttering gibberish that Billy thinks is supposed to be French, and then Billy’s really laughing. Steve’s laughing, too, though, so it’s okay.

“Guess I didn’t make much of a difference helping you with your French final.”

“Excuse you,” Steve says, trading the guitar out for the CasioTone. “I got a _B_ on my French final. Ms. Kurosawa almost couldn’t believe it, but then I mentioned you, and she totally changed her tune. I guess she knows how well you’re doing in Spanish.”

“Yeah. She teaches sign language at the community center, too.”

“ _Ms. Kurosawa’s_ your signing teacher? The way you talked about her I thought it was Tench.”

“Still don’t get why everybody thinks he’s a hard-ass. He’s just quiet.”

Steve drops his hands in his lap and gives Billy a cute smile. Billy rolls his eyes, swiping Steve’s glass to finish it off. He was right, it’s mostly bourbon.

“Hey, Billy?”

“Hmm?”

“Can we play another song together?”

Billy nods and reaches for the guitar since that’s the one Steve’s been having him play. He pauses at the sight of Steve crawling over to sit next to him, asking, “What’re you doing?”

“I wanna try it a different way,” he explains, the picture of innocence. And then, warmer, eyelids gone heavy, “You trust me, don’t you?”

“Just don’t do anything weird. That thing’s still going,” Billy says of the tape recorder.

“Yeah, well, that’s the point.” He gets in right next to Billy, insinuates himself behind him just so, and winds his arms around Billy on either side. Like a dance, almost. One hand on the frets and the other anchored to Billy’s waist. “I learned this one for you. That night Max and Dustin went to the dance, remember?”

“Hard to forget,” Billy says on a sigh, tipping his head back so Steve will nose at his hair. “I swear to God if it’s that song from the other day at Wheeler’s house…”

Steve laughs once, sharp and loud. “You are in love with your car, Billy.”

“I take _care_ of my car. There’s a _difference,_ Steve.”

He sneaks his hand under Billy’s shirt to trace his ribs with his fingers. His hand’s warm, like the rest of him. “It’s not that one, I promise.”

“Then what is it?”

Gesturing with his chin at Billy’s right hand, he says, “Something that reminded me of you.”

Billy holds his hand like a delicate claw over the strings and plucks five strings at random. The chord Steve’s holding rings out. It’s pretty, even by itself, and Billy’s never been much for music himself outside of just as a means of drowning everything out, but sitting here with Steve, wrapped up in the weight and easiness of him, the music of him, he gets how people can hear the words in a song and feel witnessed at a deeper level than words usually seem able to convey.

Steve’s been hitting him with love songs all night, and Billy hasn’t been letting himself hear them. Not really. Not as anything more than a fun way to ruffle Billy’s feathers.

And Steve’s sauced, he knows that’s part of it. Billy’s good and tipsy, too, so he’s not gonna read all that much into it, that wouldn’t be fair, but there was truth in the things Billy said to him when he got high off his ass after too long without relief. He shared things he didn’t feel brave enough to say without it.

_“And the first time… ever I kissed your mouth / I felt the earth move in my hand / Like the trembling heart of a captive bird / That was there at my command, my love…”_

It goes on for a while, repeating the same words, but slower, slowing, until they fade completely. Billy draws his thumb down the strings for what he thinks might be the end of the song, though he doesn’t have any way of knowing if he’s calling it right or not. His eyes slipped shut some time ago, and he can’t quite get them to open again.

Steve brushes a kiss behind Billy’s ear, saying, “Couldn’t laugh at that one, could you?”

“What?” Billy turns his head, blinking awake so he can participate in this conversation even though the rest of his body’s pretty content to keep being putty in Steve’s arms.

“I said,” he whispers, kissing Billy’s slack mouth, “you couldn’t laugh,” and again, “at that one,” and one more, deeper than the rest, “could you?”

Billy pushes the guitar off his lap, not as carefully as he should, admittedly, but the strings only ring out a little bit. Steve doesn't have any complaints. He goes into the kiss just as eagerly as Billy claws at him to be closer, all while flailing out blindly for the tape recorder. Billy doesn’t manage to hit the right button, but Steve gets it on the second try.

“Took you long enough,” Steve murmurs, smiling against Billy’s cheek.

“Whatever, your parents are here. I was trying to play it cool and not—” He bites Steve’s shiny red lip. “— _fucking do this_ while they’re _twenty feet away.”_

Steve leans away from him. Sighing, he says, “Billy, my parents are like… hippies. Or they used to be, I don’t know.”

_“What?”_

“Yeah. Actually, I wish they’d brought out the pictures. You would’ve put it together faster than I did.”

“So then… what, they… _they_ _know?_ About…”

“Us? No. I mean, _no, Billy,_ because I didn’t tell them. I didn’t mean to tell Dustin, or Nancy, but I know what gave me away those times, and I didn’t do any of that with them. Not that they’d care—”

“They’d care,” Billy says, holding up his hand when Steve makes to protest. “No, I mean, they’d _care_. They care _about_ you.”

“Oh.” Some of the fight goes out of him. “Well, yeah. Sure.”

Not liking the tension propping Steve up, Billy says, “I told Byers.”

_“Jonathan?”_

“No, Will.” Billy shrugs helplessly at the wide-eyed, fond look Steve gives him. “I know you don’t care if people know, and I wanna be at that level, too. I want you to be safe. I want— I want us _both_ to be safe, but I wanna be— okay with this. ‘Cuz it’s…”

He looks away. Steve slips their fingers together but doesn’t interrupt him.

“It’s good,” Billy chokes out, rubbing his other hand over his mouth and trying to clear the pain from his throat. “And I’m proud of it. God, that’s gotta be the corniest shit I’ve ever said to you.”

“It’s not,” Steve says gently, holding Billy’s chin to kiss him. “And I’ve been serenading you all night. You don’t get to talk to me about corny. You don’t get to _say the word_ in my presence. And definitely not as a dig. Okay?”

“Mmm, bossy.”

Steve preens. “Yeah, and you love it.”

“I do, goddamn it,” Billy growls, kissing him again.

“Hey, wait, does this mean we’re telling people now?”

Billy’s gut answer a few weeks ago would’ve been a hard no, but it’s not really how he feels anymore. Not now that he’s said the words and seen for himself that the world doesn’t stop spinning just because somebody knows his deep, dark secret.

Some secret, he thinks, setting his hand against Steve’s throat where the life in his neck beats and beats.

“Not everyone. Just, some. I wouldn’t be mad if Holland knew.”

“Um…” Steve flaps his mouth at the flat look Billy gives him. “I’m sorry! I never had to be good at keeping secrets before! What about Tina?”

Billy blinks, and doesn’t answer. Steve starts to smile, laughing when Billy averts his eyes.

“Figured you out, didn’t she?”

“She’s actually honestly a menace,” Billy hedges.

“You like her,” Steve summarizes plainly. “Also, she knows she’s a menace. It’s a lot of fun for her. Did you tell Katie? Or does she know, since your whole ride-along date went bad?”

“It didn’t go bad, it just— ugh, whatever. No, she doesn’t know. I don’t think she does anyway.”

“Well, she won’t be weird about it,” Steve tells him, believing it so completely that Billy narrows his eyes at him. “I’m not saying that because I let anything slip, I’m just saying, she won’t be weird about it. If you wanted to tell her. But it’s up to you.”

Billy can feel the place they’ve been dancing around the most and decides he’ll be the one to say it, even though just thinking it makes his heart pound in his ears. “If you wanted to, and if you thought it wasn’t gonna change anything, or make them treat you differently, then— I wouldn’t be mad. If you told your parents.”

Steve watches him for a second, bourbon-blurred but attentive. He smiles, squeezing Billy’s hand in his. “Would you be happy?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you’d— that you wouldn’t be mad, but would you be happy?”

For a long time Billy can’t find the words to answer him. Steve’s fine giving him time to figure it out, though, so Billy tries.

“I can’t even… like I can’t even imagine doing that, and everything being okay after.”

The glazed look in Steve’s eyes flickers with understanding. Billy thunks his head back into the wooden paneling on the pool table, and Steve tucks his chin over his shoulder so Billy can feel him nodding.

“I don’t blame you. You… Billy, you get that, right? You get that it’s not your fault?”

“I know,” Billy sighs, though saying it out loud, even dismissively, makes his skin feel tight. “You already said.”

“What did I say?”

Billy presses his hand over his face, trying to push the heat back where it came from. He means to say it like it doesn’t hurt, but it comes out unevenly, snagging at his insides and breaking his voice: “That I don’t have to explain it, or apologize.”

Steve wraps him up in his arms. He smells like Christmas. “You don’t,” he says softly.

“I’m tired of this _one fucking thing_ running my life,” Billy mutters, pressing his other hand over his face, too. His breath hitches in his throat, and he does his best to smother it at the source.

“Billy, someday it won’t. We were different a year ago, right? A year from now, we’ll be different again.”

Remembering the ocean and the smell of Banana Boat, he says, “There’s gonna be more than how I feel right now?”

“ _Yes,_ _Billy_. I’m drunk, I’ll make more sense in the morning, but _yes_. And for the record, in case you actually couldn’t tell, my mom and dad are crazy about you.”

“You say that like they’re not crazy about you,” Billy says, finally relaxing.

Steve snorts and conveniently buries his face in Billy’s shoulder, giving him the cover he needs to wipe the tears off his face. He’s muffled, but Billy can still make out his distinct, “They’re so used to schmoozing, I don’t think they ever turn it off.”

“I thought that’s what it was, too,” Billy mumbles, letting his eyes drift shut. “At first.”

“What made your change your mind?”

“The whole thing with the mistletoe.”

“Hmm, yeah,” Steve sighs, lifting his head. “They’re not shy about the touching. Told you. Hippies.”

Billy laughs, shaking his head. “Sweet’s what they are. Guess that explains you.”

A wide smile spreads across his face. His focus slides just slightly over Billy’s shoulder, a flicker of wonder overtaking his expression. “Hey, it’s still snowing. Does it snow in California?”

“Not everywhere, but yeah.” Billy looks over at the window, too, curious.

“Let’s go watch it come down!”

“You’re not dressed for it.”

“I’ll put on shoes. And you’ve got a jacket. It’s fine.”

Billy lets himself be led out into the hallway and to the front door. Steve toes on his shoes, still holding Billy’s wrist in his hand, and marches him toward the den so they can sneak out the backdoor. Billy digs his heels in, jolting Steve’s arm when he keeps walking after Billy’s stopped.

His parents don’t notice them at the mouth of the hallway. Mr. Harrington’s asleep with his head in Mrs. Harrington’s lap, and Mrs. Harrington’s running her hand through his hair.

“Hey, Mom?”

She hums, looking up a second later, fingers twisting in her husband’s hair. “Hi, baby. Goin’ to bed?”

“I wanna show Billy the snow. We’re just gonna be in the backyard.”

“I know you’re gonna put on a jacket first.”

“Oh, yeah. Uh—” He looks at Billy, at their hands, and lets go of him. “I’ll be right back.”

Billy shrugs on Mr. Harrington’s jacket just to have something to do with his hands and catches Mrs. Harrington’s eye, not entirely by accident. She smiles at him.

“It really does suit you, Billy.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Harrington.” He keeps his feet quiet on the carpet as he approaches. “He’s out, isn’t he?”

“Mmm, he’s a sleepy drunk. Did you have a good time, sweetheart? I hope we weren’t too much.”

“You were great,” he says, trying to pour all the weight of that truth into the words. “I’m… I was really nervous to come here tonight.”

“You nervous anymore?”

He shakes his head, and Steve comes up behind him, quickly but quietly so as not to wake his dad.

“Do you need help getting him upstairs, Mom?”

“I think we’re gonna sit like this for a little while. You boys go on ahead. If I don’t see you when you come in, I’ll see you in the mornin’, all right?”

“Kay. Night, Mom.” Steve walks over and drops a kiss in her hair.

“Goodnight, baby.”

“Goodnight, Mrs. Harrington.”

“Goodnight, Billy. I really am glad I got to meet you.”

“Me, too.”

She beams up at him, bunching her fingers up in Mr. Harrington’s hair, to a buzzsaw snore from him. Charmed, she smiles down at him for a moment. Remembering their audience, she looks up and says, “Okay, go on, get. Steve, you zip up that jacket, or you’ll catch a chill.”

Steve noisily runs the zip all the way up to his chin so she’ll hear it without having to turn and watch him go, then he opens the sliding door for Billy to go out ahead of him. The snowfall’s silent and unending, a thick, pristine layer of it coating the ground that’ll be frozen come morning. Billy looks straight up into the black sky, squinting when snowflakes get caught in his eyelashes and melt. Next to him Steve holds out his tongue, catching several at a time. Billy copies his example.

“Pretty, right?” Steve says, grinning with one eye squeezed shut. He blinks hard. “Cold, cold, cold…”

Billy laughs and buries his hands in the deep pockets of his jacket. It really is warmer than anything he owns. Must’ve cost a pretty penny, too. He can’t believe he gets to take it home. “Your dad’s not gonna have buyer’s remorse in the morning when I take off in his jacket, is he?”

Steve sighs grumpily. “It’s _your_ jacket now. You don’t have to keep calling it his.”

Laughing under his breath, Billy rocks back on his heels and goes back to staring up at the slow cyclone of flurries coming down overhead. He bumps Steve’s shoulder with his. “Thanks for having me over tonight, Steve.”

“Thanks for coming,” he murmurs. He slips slightly nudging Billy back and looks up at him, expression gone wide and vulnerable. “I wish I could’ve met your mom.”

“So do I.”

Steve nods and loops his arm through Billy’s, tucking his hand into his own pocket once their elbows are securely linked. They stand like that for a while in the cold dark. It’s peaceful, knowing his parents are in the house behind them getting ready for bed and that there’s a tape inside preserving the many varied ways Steve made him laugh tonight. Billy’s seen so much of Steve, and so much of where he’s been to get here, he wants to give something of himself back.

“My mom, she couldn’t hold a tune, really. Not like you,” he starts, “but there was this song she used to sing sometimes. Haven’t thought about it in forever, but maybe you know it.”

“How does it go?” Steve asks intently, swaying.

Billy drops his head back, humming, trying to remember. He can’t find the melody, but the words are almost sort of there. He mumbles, “Just you and me, hm-hmmm-hm-hmm, uh… something and— oh, simple and free, two duh-duh duh… no, maybe that’s not it.”

“No, I can kinda hear it… simple and free, two… as one, as love’s— reward?” His eyes light up. _“Loving you’s so damn easy!”_

“That’s it!”

“Yeah! Chicago! _You are my love in my life / You are my inspiration,”_ he sings, grinning and taking Billy back to a time in his life before his dad hit him, when his mom’s voice and the smell of her hair was something he could have every day. _“Just you and me / Simple and free / You’re everything I’ve ever dreamed of…”_

Steve drifts into the rhythm and loses himself to the words. He always sounds good, but right now he sounds like the shape of Mom’s smile and the way she’d hugged him that last day.

_“Give me your own special smile / Promise you’ll never leave me…”_ Steve croons, setting his chin on Billy’s shoulder and singing through Billy’s tears. _“Love me tonight, love me forever and ever / You know I can’t forget you…”_

Billy tucks his chin over the top of Steve’s head, the snowflakes in his hair coming apart at the heat in his skin. He takes his hand out of his pocket and wraps his arm around Steve’s shoulder, holding him closer. Steve gets through the lyrics and hums for a while longer, winding his arm around Billy’s back until he can hook his hand in his pocket on that side. Billy reaches down to lace their fingers together. They’re both like ice now, but only in their hands. Everywhere else, they’re warm, warm.

“Merry Christmas, Steve,” Billy says.

“Merry Christmas, Billy.”

It feels like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drink some water, you tremendous beauty, you


	26. Peak Entertainment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THEY SAY IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN IT'S MY BIRTHDAY, TOO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1) Referenced abuse  
> 2) Bullying and homophobia  
> 3) Another royal rumble — no one gets hit with a chair or explodes through a table, unfortunately

> _Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself._
> 
> _To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like_
> 
> _everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting._
> 
> — e e cummings

Part Five: To Be Nobody-But-Yourself

Katie takes a cupcake out of the tray Steve’s holding out to her and takes a bite, ready with automatic praise in case they’re not actually edible. She’s surprised to find it’s actually really good, moist and not too sweet. She flicks a spot of pink frosting off Tina’s nose and picks the strawberry slice off the top of hers to eat it separately.

“Hey, it’s the birthday boy,” Steve says, swinging around to Billy when he gets to the table last out of everyone. “Want a sweet one… _sweet one?”_

 _“Ugh,”_ Billy replies, taking a pretty pink cupcake off the tray.

“You’re welcome, Billy!” he pops back gamely. “I know strawberry’s your favorite.”

Tina scarfs down the second half of her cupcake and says, from behind her hand, “Happy Birthday!”

“Thanks, Nomura,” he sighs, sitting in between her and Steve, with Barb and Nancy across from him. He picks halfheartedly at the crimped paper lining the cupcake, mumbling thanks to everyone else’s birthday wishes. His face is bright red and only gets redder when Nancy whips out a camera.

She holds for a beat without taking the picture. “Can I, Billy? I let it slip to Will that it was your birthday, and he really wanted a picture if I could get one.”

He rolls his eyes, trying very hard to have a bad attitude but sounding completely soft. “Yeah, all right. Bring it in,” he adds in an undertone, looking at Tina. “He likes you, too.”

“Me, too!” Steve says, grinning and throwing his arm around Billy’s neck. “Barb, get over here!”

“Do you want me to take the picture, Nancy?” Katie asks, already getting to her feet. “I won’t drop your fancy camera, I promise.”

“It’s Jonathan’s fancy camera,” Barb corrects, passing it between Nancy and Katie across the table. “Steve got it for him.”

“As a ‘thank you’ for when he kicked your ass?” Billy asks, one eyebrow raised.

Steve laughs awkwardly, looking up at Nancy where she goes to stand behind him. He shrugs, glancing at Billy to say, “I guess it was, yeah.”

“Okay, big smiles!” Katie announces in the same voice she uses when she’s trying to keep Maisie focused on Picture Day. She gets the shot centered— Billy in the middle with Steve and Tina hanging off either one of his arms; Nancy and Barb in the background, the former with a hand on Steve’s shoulder and the latter holding up bunny ears behind Nancy’s head— and holds in place. “Say cheese! Billy, you have to smile! Steve, make him smile.”

Without waiting to be told twice, Steve leans over and says something in his ear that gets Billy to bark a laugh, and Katie snaps the picture. She waits a second for everyone else to relax, thinking she’s done, and in the lull between picture taking and everyone going back to their own seats, Steve says something else she can’t hear. Whatever it is, Billy smiles, properly. Katie sneaks a second picture. Neither of them even notice, but Tina does and catches her eye long enough to wink.

“Thank you for doing that,” Nancy gushes, taking the camera back from her. “Will’s going to love that.”

“Speaking of tiny, virtuosic artists,” Tina begins, rooting around in her backpack for her sketchbook. She turns to Billy. “I made you something!”

“Oh,” he mumbles, nervous out of nowhere, “that’s okay, Nomura.”

“No, no, no! _Well, yes._ You know me so well,” she laughs. “I have two, though. One I want you to have now, and the other I’ll give you… at a later date.”

Looking up at Tina’s careful wording, Steve waves his hand, telling her, “He knows about tomorrow. Dustin’s helping me set everything up tonight. You guys are all invited?”

Billy nods at the questioning look Steve gives him. “Yeah. Or whatever.”

“You aren’t allowed to be this stuffy on your birthday,” Tina complains, tearing out a page from her sketchbook and handing it to him. While he’s distracted looking at it, she climbs up onto the picnic table they’re all sitting at. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU—”

 ** _“OhmygodTina,”_** Billy hisses, covering his face with both hands and letting her drawing flutter into his lap. It’s a pretty faithful rendition of Billy’s car with him behind the wheel looking unstoppable. _“Get down here!”_

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!”

Barb, Nancy, and Steve join her in song. Katie tries her best not to laugh over Billy’s plaintive cries of, _I’m gonna take your ass to the dance next week if you don’t quit it!_ but it’s just too hysterical. His threats don’t give anyone pause, and in fact, they only seem to make Tina sing louder. Steve pitches sideways to pillow his arms beneath his head on the table, his shoulders shaking with laughter.

“TINA!” Billy shouts, but to no avail.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BILLY HARGROVE!!!” they persist, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!”

The jeers from their neighboring classmates aren’t as bad as they would be in the cafeteria, but a few people still whistle and clap patronizingly. Billy’s fuming so hard he looks like steam could come out of his ears.

“How was that, Billy?” Steve says, still tittering in between words. “You were saying you wanted to be Tina’s date to the dance next week?”

“My favorite color is purple, so we have to dress to match,” she chirps back, smiling winsomely.

Billy scowls at her, about as genuinely interested in the prospect as Tina is, Katie knows. Rather than say that, he takes a huge bite of his cupcake, pausing when he tastes it. He hums and jostles Steve with his elbow, nodding to say what he can’t with his mouth full.

“Thanks! I didn’t bake ‘em too long this time. Oh,” he says, straightening out and looking across the way at Nancy. “Just in case Will didn’t tell him, Jonathan’s invited, too. Don’t tell anyone else, though. If half the school shows up, someone’s gonna bring booze, and I don’t want my kids around drunk assholes. That being said, if anyone has weed for Billy—”

“You’re so funny,” Billy mutters, cocking his head at a bit of an angle and knuckling at his ear.

“Actually, I might know someone,” Nancy offers in what sounds to Katie like a deliberately delicate voice.

Steve laughs, “No, really?”

“Yeah, asking him might be more trouble than it’s worth, but I’m sure he… Billy? Are you all right?”

“Fuckin’ ear just rings and rings sometimes. ’S not a big deal,” he grouses, obviously ruffled. “It’ll quit in a minute.”

“Cover them like this with your hands,” Barb tells him, holding her own up like earmuffs to demonstrate. She waits for Billy to copy her before saying, “Now tap the back of your head with your fingers until it stops.”

He ducks his head a little to follow her instructions, pouting and grumbling a while, until eventually he stops. A mystified look crosses his face, and he whispers, “Holy shit. How’d you know that would work?”

“I get tinnitus, too. Ever since, y’know.”

“What’d you call it?”

“Tinnitus. It’s just what you said. Ringing in the ears. I guess it can happen when you get knocked around a little too hard,” she muses, gingerly touching a spot hidden away in her hair. Her face pales suddenly, and she rushes to add, “ _Or music!_ Music, when it’s too loud. When you play it. That can damage your eardrums just as much.”

Billy’s rubbing a spot on his cheek, lost in thought. It’s while he’s doing that, with his hair pushed away from his face to keep the frosting from getting in it, that Katie notices the uneven scar ripped down the length of his earlobe. She wonders how it got there and if it hurt as much as it looks like it did.

“That’s a neat trick, Barb,” Tina chimes in, either unaware of the creeping tension or purposely ignoring it— probably the second one, honestly. “My ears get all screwy, too, sometimes because y jaw’s weird. See?” She holds Billy’s hand to the spot where her jaw bone reaches up to her ear so he can feel it pop when she opens and closes her mouth.

“Oh! Shit,” he says, raising his other hand to her remaining ear. “Do it again? Steve, come feel.”

“Ooh.”

Already pretty used to this kind of thing by now, Katie gets up to sit on the other side of the picnic table with Barb and Nancy. It gives her the perfect vantage point to watch through the viewfinder when Nancy snaps another picture of Tina and Steve laughing at Billy’s comically scrunched up nose. Even making a face, he looks a lot happier than when she first met him.

She’s glad. Surrounded by friends and cupcakes is exactly how all birthdays should go.

* * *

Robin hands in her math test with twenty minutes to spare and volunteers to clap the erasers outside. It isn’t strictly necessary, but Tench never lets them leave early. She messed up and never got another library book to replace the one she finished the week before, so it’s either erasers or sitting in class staring at the blackboard.

Chalk dust puffs up all around her in a powdery death cloud. She stacks the two erasers in one hand and waves the other through the air so she can breathe. It’s a beautiful day out, not accounting for the dust.

She’s got a paper to write for Spanish and AP Physics homework to get through for Scofield’s class when she gets home. If she gets started on the Physics stuff with the last fifteen minutes or so of Trig, she can use the study session with Billy to bounce essay ideas off his big stupid brain. They do work on Spanish, usually, but they just wrapped this most recent block, and it’s as good a time as any to focus on other subjects.

Billy’s a decent study partner. She hadn’t been sure at all when Ms. Carter first suggested it.

Robin isn’t much of an expert on boys. She knows half the girls in her class are crazy about Steve Harrington, and about as many, some of them overlapping with the first category, are just as crazy about Billy. She doesn’t see the appeal.

But then, she wouldn’t.

Back in the classroom, she breezes through her Physics assignment. It takes a fraction of the time she thought it would since most of the answers come straight out of the textbook page for page. Not bad.

After the final bell, she takes her time packing up and heads outside to wait for Katie to walk down from the portables where the Shop classes are taught. She looks around the crowds of people for her friend, eventually spotting her walking arm in arm with Dean Clemons, Billy on his other side. Dean sees Robin waiting and waves, drawing Katie and Billy’s attention, too.

“Hey! How’d your test go?” Katie asks, looping her other arm around Robin. “I bet you aced it.”

“Yeah, it was easy. Anything interesting happen in Shop?”

“Yes, actually! Dean set a rag on fire. Mr. Greenbriar nearly had a heart attack. I’ve never seen his head turn so red.”

“It wasn’t my fault! Wyatt Fitzgerald left it on the exhaust manifold and didn’t tell me! He’s a sabotager.”

“Saboteur,” Billy, Robin, and Katie all say at the same time.

“That, too.” He heaves a tormented sigh. “If I had a better partner I’d get so much done.”

“Like a full-on structure fire, you think?” Billy suggests, bland.

Katie barks a laugh, blushing a pretty, peachy pink to go with her red hair. Popular gossip likes to say Katie’s had a huge crush on Billy ever since he transferred, but Robin’s been hanging out with her and Tina since the start of this semester when she changed homerooms, and she doesn’t think there’s any truth to it. They’re friendly and they walk to and from class together, but that’s all. It’s more or less the relationship she and Billy have, ever since Carter put them together for study group.

“You talk shit all you like, Billy,” Dean presses. “You know I’m right.”

“Fitzgerald’s an idiot,” he allows, agreeably enough. “Still pretty sure you’re a firebug, though.”

“Pyromaniac,” Katie concurs.

“Compulsive,” Robin adds, factual, brisk.

Dean throws his hands, but he’s laughing.

“All right, I’ll see you guys,” Billy calls out, branching off on his own to head out to the parking lot. “Oh, Buckley, I’m gonna be late to our thing. Ms. Carter said she had something for me. Gimme like fifteen minutes?”

“You’re not gonna pick up your sister first?” Katie asks.

Billy keeps walking but backwards so he can maintain eye contact. He shakes his head, saying, “She’s getting a ride.” He holds up his hand in a wave and turns on his heel to jog in the direction of Ms. Carter’s class. “Don’t wait up!”

“What do you think Carter wants?” Dean asks, bumping Katie’s shoulder with his.

She shrugs. “Maybe she got him a card for his birthday.”

“His birthday?” Robin asks.

“Yeah, it’s today. You missed it. Steve brought cupcakes, and Tina climbed up onto the table and sang him Happy Birthday. It was pretty great.”

Speak of the devil, Tina appears behind them and ducks under Dean’s arm to be in between him and Katie. She says, “I aim to please. Where is the birthday boy anyway? I told him at lunch I wasn’t done with him, and that was a promise, dang it.”

“He had to go see Ms. Carter for something,” Robin tells her, looking around Katie to make eye contact.

“Oh! Hi, Robin! I love that top on you! So cute.”

Robin feels her face flush and smiles, embarrassed. Nobody’s ever known Tina to date, period, but she really is so pretty and so easy to like. “Thanks,” she says, when Tina keeps smiling sweetly at her.

“Sure!” Tina’s smile widens into a grin before she promptly breaks away from Katie’s elbow to spin Dean around in the direction of his locker, calling after him, “Don’t forget your homework again, Dean!” Skipping over to Robin’s side this time, she says, “Do you want company until Billy gets back from Ms. Carter’s class? I don’t have to be at practice for another fifteen minutes.”

“That’s okay. I need a new library book. I’m probably just gonna look for one until he shows up.”

“Okay. Tell Andy to show you his stash of banned books,” she says, managing to look conspiratorial and innocent at the same. “I swear he’s read every book there is in Hawkins.”

“I’ll ask him,” Robin promises, laughing at her insistence and stopping short at the sight of Tammy Thompkins leaned up against her locker, waiting. “Uh.”

“Gonna run to my car real quick. Katie?”

“Yeah, I’m heading that way, too. I gotta go pick up Maisie from school. We’ll see you after your study session with Billy, won’t we, Robin?”

“Probably,” she mumbles, still gawking at Tammy where she hasn’t noticed Robin watching her like a weirdo. “We walk out together most days.”

“Don’t forget to wish Billy a happy birthday,” Tina says. “He gets red like a tomato. It’s the best.”

“You really should go easier on him, Tina,” Katie teases, but she’s smiling too much to mean it.

“Gross. Who do you think I am? Bye, Robin! See you later!”

She waves and waits for them to go before turning her attention back to Tammy. Before she can work out a way to make her heart stop pounding in her chest, Tammy turns her head and catches Robin looking. A wide, perfect smile breaks out over her face and she pushes off Robin’s locker to jog toward her. She steps out from underneath the shadow cast by the rusted awning overhead, and the wintry afternoon sun flashes through her dirty blonde hair like wheat at dawn. At just the right angle, it blazes in her deep brown eyes like living amber.

Tammy looks just like a princess. Robin wishes she could tell her that. She wishes she could say it and mean it just the way she feels it.

“Hey, Robin!”

“Hi, Tammy?” she asks, wincing at herself before trying again. “Hi! Hi.”

“So listen, this is kind of awkward, but I wanted to ask. Do you still have your study sessions after school with Billy Hargrove?”

“Um, yeah? Yes. Ms. Carter insisted, so…”

“That must be tough. He’s got such a bad attitude.”

Robin’s so nervous that her answering laugh comes out way too loud, and she cringes at herself. Tammy doesn’t really talk to Robin outside of class, but she’s nice enough to her. She’s _very_ _nice_ to everyone and kind and quick to smile.

Between her blonde hair and her bubbly personality, she’s exactly what comes to mind when Robin pictures the stereotypical cheerleader, minus all the cliquey cutthroat stuff.

Tammy’s still looking at her expectantly, and she startles.

“No, I mean, yeah, he’s— he can be kind of— stoic, at times. Honestly he’s kind of a goofball.”

That’s true, top to bottom. Back when he started here, Billy had a chip on his shoulder that probably could’ve been seen from space. Even with her when they first met, it was like he had something to prove. He’s settled down a lot since then, though, and if his friends are any indication of what he’s like, he’s more of a softie than he is a dickhead.

“Well, listen, I’ve got practice here in a minute, so I’ll get right to it. I was wondering if you were expecting Steve to show up after your thing? Him and Billy are like this lately, so,” she says on a laugh, crossing her fingers to demonstrate, “I thought I might catch him and see if he might wanna go with me to the Valentine’s Day Dance next week.”

“Oh! Oh, yeah.” Robin nods and moves impulsively toward her locker, trying to hide how her face burns to match the roiling in her stomach. “Yeah, the thing is? Tammy? Um…”

“What?” she asks, following.

“ _The thing is,_ is that,” she stammers, focusing completely on getting the combination on her locker open, but her hands are shaking so much she keeps overshooting the numbers. “Steve really doesn’t— I mean, he never comes by.”

That’s untrue, left to right. Steve comes by every other time they meet up, just about. Sometimes he pulls up a chair on Billy’s right and stays there the whole hour doodling quietly in a spiral notebook. Other times he sprints directly to their table, parks it _on top of_ Billy’s books, says maybe a total of ten words Billy goes out of his way not to respond to, and takes off again, inexplicably. Robin’s gotten used to it. It’s on-brand Steve Harrington stupid, but at least he isn’t disruptive to the point of breaking their concentration altogether.

“I thought I saw him sitting with you guys right before finals, though,” Tammy says, too casually.

“That was so he could cram for a test! I really don’t think we’ll be seeing him again.”

That’s half-true, today. Steve doesn’t normally double up on crashing their study hour, and he already dropped in on them on Monday. So he’s not _likely_ to show up, but he might, for Billy’s birthday.

Robin tells herself that’s part of why she can’t allow Tammy to peek in on them, today of all days. Not just because she can’t stomach it if she has to be there to watch Tammy pour her heart out to Steve, again, but because it’s Billy’s birthday. And Robin _doesn’t_ _know_ what’s between him and Steve, they’ve never told her anything outright— why would they?— but she’s not stupid. They have mutual friends in common, and Robin’s been picking Billy Hargrove’s brain for two hours a week, sometimes three, since December. Failing all of that, she’s seen how familiar they are with each other, how thoughtlessly intimate. How everyone doesn’t know about those two idiots, she doesn’t know.

She hasn’t made up her mind yet whether it’s safe to wish Billy a happy birthday, but she _knows_ she can’t let Tammy and her moony eyes anywhere near him without it completely spoiling his day.

“Besides,” Robin adds desperately, upon closing her locker and seeing the unconvinced set to Tammy’s face, “ _besides,_ you know Andy runs a tight ship. He’s like his dad, he doesn’t like people goofing around in the library. That’s why Steve doesn’t, um, show up, unless he’s got a test he’s studying for. Because of Andy.”

Tammy’s face falls. “Oh. I guess you’re right. His dad’s so serious, too. Must run in the family.”

“Uh huh.”

“Glad I checked first.” She checks her watch and pouts. “I gotta run. Thanks for the heads-up, Robin.”

“Yep. Yeah. Sure,” the word’s still on her lips when Tammy turns and walks away. She clutches her books closer to her chest, trying to smother the disappointment building in her throat and stinging in her eyes. “Sure.”

There’s no point in rushing to the library, but she still keeps up a brisk pace on her way there. It helps to distract from how fast her heart’s still beating. She drops her books on their usual table and lets her chair scrape the floor when she drags it out to drop her bag against the seat. She doesn’t realize she’s breathing way too hard until somebody clears their throat behind her.

She spins around and finds herself in a sudden staring match with Andy, who’s just as wide eyed as she is. Hot tears hit her cheeks, and she turns away, mortified, scrubbing furiously at her blazing cheeks.

“Sorry, sorry! I thought— I can go. I’m going.”

“No, don’t. It’s fine.” She presses her hands to her eyes for a second, shaking her head at her outburst. She thought she was done being jealous of Steve Harrington and the way Tammy looks when she’s thinking about him. “I’m okay. I didn’t mean to be so loud.”

“Oh, you know I don’t mind,” he says, and she looks up to see him putting all his weight onto his right side so he can wave his left hand dismissively. “I only came over because it sounded like somebody fell over. You promise you’re all right?”

“Yeah,” she says, smiling and almost all the way to meaning it. Her face is still on the warm side and her eyelashes are sticking together, but she’s not going to cry again. “Thanks, Andy.”

He smiles, all dimples. “No Billy today?” he asks, nudging his chin in the direction of the empty chair across from hers.

“He’s running late. Hey, while I have you here? Tina said you’re the guy to ask about banned books.”

“Of course she did,” he sighs, pivoting around on his crutches. “Come on then. I won’t make a liar out of her.”

“And they say chivalry’s dead,” she teases.

He turns out to be good for it and she makes it back to the table with _Slaughterhouse Five_ and _To Kill a Mockingbird._ She can’t technically check them out, but he makes note of them in a little notebook he keeps at the front desk. It actually even works to take her mind off the whole thing with Tammy earlier.

Back at their table, Billy still hasn’t shown up. Robin busies herself getting all her materials out and her books hidden away. While she’s waiting, she scribbles a note to herself to remember to bring one of her mom’s hardback book sleeves to put over the top of them when she reads during class. She doesn’t think any of her esteemed classmates would know what they were looking at, but she doesn’t want to risk getting Andy in trouble either way.

Yeah, that’s right. She can be sneaky.

Fifteen minutes past the initial fifteen minutes he anticipated being late, Billy finally shows up. Looking about as flustered as she’s ever seen him, he makes his way stiffly and quietly to their table.

“Hi, Billy.”

His eyes are red when he looks up at her. There’s a blankness to his expression that makes him look like a kid of twelve and not the stomping, smirking tool everyone else still somehow legitimately believes him to be. She must be showing that in her face because that look shutters up quick, and he looks away, huffing an indistinct swear under his breath.

“Hey, Buckley. Trade essays?”

“You’ve written yours already?”

“First draft’s due on Monday,” he mutters, unloading stuff from a backpack she’s never seen him with before. He tears a sheet of paper out of his notebook and hands it to her, still without meeting her eyes again. “Go crazy.”

She can see a few grammatical errors just at a glance. “I can write on this?”

“Not like you to ask. That your Physics assignment? Lemme see.”

“All the answers were in the book.”

Billy hums but scans over them anyway. Robin shrugs and moves in on his essay. She reads it once for mistakes and then a second time for content. They had a choice between writing about what they did over the holidays and what they’re going to do for Spring Break. Robin was planning on writing about her plans for March, but Billy went with Christmas.

At least she’s pretty sure that’s what he picked. If he didn’t name the holiday outright, she wouldn’t know the night in question was meant to be celebrated. He’s really got a knack for saying a lot without giving away anything concrete in the process.

“Either I’m gettin’ better or you’re gettin’ nicer,” he croons, nodding at his paper and the many red marks she’s left behind.

She rolls her eyes at him. “You’re getting better.”

He snorts and hands her her Physics assignment back. “So what, you don’t have anything ready for me to look at?”

“Not yet. I was gonna bounce ideas off you, but after reading yours, I might just bullshit mine.”

“What? I wrote exactly what I did.”

“Yeah, Billy, and you left out _all_ the details,” she says, sliding his essay around so it’s sideways and they can both read it. “You went to your friend’s house for dinner and met his parents, but you don’t say who the friend was or what his parents were like. You don’t talk about the snow or the presents or _the food—_ on the surface, it looks like just another Tuesday in Hawkins.”

He narrows his eyes at her then looks grudgingly at his neat, cramped handwriting. He looks back up at her. “You think I should put all that stuff in?”

“It’s gotta be two pages,” she tells him, nodding. “Yes, I think you should put all that stuff in.”

“Ugh, fine.” He holds the end of the red pen in her direction. “Underline all the spots where you think I gotta say more.”

Robin read it twice, so she knows all the keywords to look for. She makes quick work of slashing lines where he needs to elaborate some more. Once all the obvious ones are out of the way, she speed reads through it one more time. Without looking up from the page, she says, “I’m guessing it was Steve?”

“What, Christmas?” He shrugs, dropping his cheek in his hand, and mumbles, “Yeah, who else?”

She hums and hands him his essay back. “So what _were_ his parents like?”

“Good hair, big smiles. Kind. Shocker, right?” he mumbles, scanning over the marks she’s made in his essay. He folds it down the middle where the paper’s already creased, and tucks it into a book he’s using as a folder.

A letter slips loose from beneath the cover, and the letterhead catches her eye.

“You heard back from NYU?”

He jumps and looks at her with those big, unguarded eyes again. She flicks her gaze down at his book and then up at him. Glancing down, his face turns red and he inches it behind the cover.

Billy scrubs a hand through his hair and sighs. “Uh, yeah.”

“And? Did you get in?”

He’s quiet for a long time, and she waits, on tenterhooks. If he didn’t get in, he’s got a few other possibles she knows he applied to, so it wouldn’t be the end of the world, but still, she’d be bummed out for him if his first letter was a rejection. They worked hard on their applications, and if they didn’t take him, she might have cause to be worried about her application, too.

Billy goes long enough not answering that she starts to get nervous, but finally, he nods, mouth smashed into a hard line. Robin accidentally kicks him under the table.

_“Ow!”_

“Sorry! _Billy!_ What are you looking so sad for? You got in!”

That just gets him sighing again. He scoots his chair out to get clearance to rub at the shin she kicked. “You got your mind all made up about going in the fall?”

“Yes, Billy. If you can believe it, that was actually the whole point of applying,” she says, half sarcastically, until she sees the serious look on his face. She eases up a little bit. “Don’t you?”

“I don’t know, Buckley, I mean… _I mean, yeah, but,”_ he mutters, still sighing, “I don’t know.” He twirls his pencil around his knuckles in lazy, thoughtless circles, looking off into the middle distance. “Finally getting used to being here. Just a lotta movement in not a lotta time, I guess.”

“I get that,” she says, understanding his reservations, sort of, but having reservations of her own about it. “If you stayed, do you think you’d be happy?”

Billy’s fingers stop moving, and the pencil spinning around in his hand clatters to the table. He plucks it off the table and rolls it back and forth beneath two fingers, watching it intently. Quietly, he says, “My family’s here.”

“You think mine’s not? Billy, everyone I’ve ever known or cared about is in Hawkins, but the world’s bigger than this.”

“You sound like Ms. Carter.”

“Ms. Carter’s smart and she knows what she’s talking about,” Robin tells him flatly.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, looking up finally, “and you sound like her.”

Her face feels hot like before, but her eyes, thankfully, stay dry. She points at his backpack, wanting desperately to talk about something else. “Did she give you our reading list or what?”

“Nah, I asked Wheeler if I could borrow it after you guys got done reading it,” he says, and miraculously doesn’t give her any grief about changing the subject. “I’ve read it before, but I forgot Victor was such a dumbass. Why’s the book named after him anyway?”

“It’s narratively appropriate, given that he thinks the story’s about him.”

“Such bullshit,” Billy grumbles. “The zombie guy never even gets a name, and this asshole gets an epithet, Buckley. _An epithet. The Modern Prometheus,”_ he intones, yanking the book out again for emphasis. “You ever read about what happened to Prometheus? He got eaten alive by an eagle every day, forever, because he stole fire _and then gave it away_. Prometheus is metal as fuck. Victor Frankenstein’s a dipshit, _and he’s not even a real doctor!”_

Robin presses her hands to her mouth, too late to stop the loudest part of her laugh from escaping. Billy looks so genuinely offended it’s hard not to be amused at his ranting. He shakes his head in disgust and flips through the various dogeared pages that Robin knows just by looking, there’s no way Nancy put them there. Definitely more of a prissy bookmark user, that one. Billy must’ve been the one to crack the spine on it, too.

“Nancy Wheeler let you do that to her book?” she asks jokingly.

Billy has the good grace to blush, but he’s clearly angry about it. “She’s not as delicate as you think, Buckley. I still had a black eye _from her_ when she gave it to me to read. The princess can throw a punch.”

“You call her _the princess? To her face?”_

He turns even redder at that. “Yeah, I do. And?”

“And what does she call you?”

“Pain-in-the-ass, mostly— why are you laughing?”

* * *

Practice ends a bit earlier than usual, so some of the girls head out right away without even getting changed or cleaned up first. Tina takes her time brushing her hair fresh out of the shower. No use moving double time when she’ll just end up waiting for Katie in the cold with her hair wet. She gathers it up in her hands and ties it up into a bun so it’ll be off her neck.

Halfway through, she hears the pitter-patter of feet soft and immediately behind her. Before she can turn around, somebody’s crashing into her, and a surprised shout squeezes out of her.

“Ha! Gotcha!” Heather crows, crushing her in a hug. She smells like lilacs and lemonade.

“You did! You got me!” Tina laughs, stumbling when Heather lets go of her. “And you didn’t even need a scary costume to do it.”

“I still totally want to borrow that suit for when I move to a big city somewhere,” she says, smiling widely. Her hair sticks to her forehead and the sides of her face, and she’s still in her sticky workout clothes. A little wrinkle appears between her eyebrows. “Oh, Tina, I messed up your hair. Let me fix it?”

“One of your fancy braids?” she asks hopefully. “Then it’ll dry in curls.”

“Yeah, of course. Come sit.” Heather waits for Tina to sit and brushes out her hair again, humming a lilting melody under her breath. “Hey, do you think you’ll go to the Valentine’s Day Dance next week?”

Tina swallows a laugh. Billy had asked her, grumpily, to go with him, but that had been a funny joke more than a sincere request for company. He’d only done it to make her stop serenading him with Happy Birthday at lunch, and even then, only because he knew it’d make her laugh.

“What?” Heather asks, gasping happily. “Do you have a date already? Is it Billy? He’s too cute. You know how Scofield likes to lock his room up after the bell so people can’t sneak in late? Well, one time,” she trails off, giggling, before saying, “one time I saw Billy waiting outside his class in the rain to get in, and he looked just like a drowned kitten.”

“He does!” she says over Heather’s helpless laughter. “He looks like a kitten when he’s mad! I’ve told him. He always just thinks I’m giving him a hard time!”

“Are you talking about Billy Hargrove?” Jill asks, voice raised to be heard over the spray of the showers. There’s a screech of metal, and she pokes her head around a row of lockers, already wrapped up in a towel. “Did he ask you to the dance next week?” Without waiting for an answer, she grins wickedly and steamrolls right into, “So _that’s why_ you always brushed Steve off before? Tina Nomura likes the bad boys.”

“Billy’s _not_ ,” Tina laughs.

“And I guess that explains why things didn’t work out with him and Katie,” Jill continues seriously. “Gosh, that makes _a whole world_ of sense! That’s _so funny_ how things work out.”

“Kind of just how it works in a small town,” Heather murmurs, but Jill’s still not listening.

“Did you hear that, Tammy? Tina’s going to the Valentine’s Day Dance with Billy Hargrove!”

Faintly, Heather says, “I don’t think you actually said if you _were_ going with him. Are you?”

“No, we’re not,” Tina mumbles back a little helplessly. At least Billy will probably get a good belly laugh out of it if this particular rumor circulates back to him, seeing as he hadn’t minded all that much when the same thing happened with him and Katie.

Appearing from around the end of the lockers, already dressed but shiny from the showers, Tammy says, “So Steve’s free then?” She flashes a shy smile. “Do you know if he has a date yet? Probably not, right? I heard Nancy Wheeler’s taking Jonathan Byers, so she’s out, and it’s not as if he’d go with Katie.”

A current of protectiveness washes over Tina, and she says, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Tammy glances in her direction, surprised at Tina’s tone. She shrugs, ruffling a towel through her long blonde hair. “Well, you know. It’s already like Billy traded Katie for you, and if— ”

“Traded,” Tina echoes, amazed. “ _Traded?_ They didn’t _do anything.”_

“Okay, fine, they didn’t do anything,” Tammy relents, smirking as if to clue Tina in on the joke, but it doesn’t feel like something she can smile at. “Maybe he’s hoping _you’ll_ put out? Guess he hasn’t been here long enough to know better.”

Heather’s hand leaves her hair, and without any ties or clips holding her handiwork in place, Tina’s hair falls in a loose, damp wave on either side of her face. She stands up, and she doesn’t know what look is on her face or what her posture is communicating, but Jill slips away around the other side of the lockers. She doesn’t know where Heather is.

“Where is this coming from?” Tina asks, genuinely, thoroughly thunderstruck. “Why do you care how anybody else spends their time, or who with?”

“Tina, come on. I’m just playing. You have to admit, though. It is a little funny Billy going out with you.”

Tina shouldn’t care. She’s heard all of this bullshit before and from meaner, more deliberate people than Tammy Thompson.

It’s just the confluence of insults and how they’re not all directed at her that makes this particular hurt even more unbearable than the standard heartache she’s used to. Katie doesn’t deserve to get dragged into this, or Billy.

“Tammy, personally, I think it’s funny you think Steve would ever date you,” she says in a hollow sort of robotic voice she doesn’t recognize as her own, and that checks out since she’s barely aware of what she’s saying, “when he already turned you down this last Thanksgiving. Oh, you look surprised,” Tina adds, dimly aware of how hard her heart’s pounding. “Did you wonder why he never called after you gave him your number?”

“You know what I’ve been _wondering,_ Tina?” Tammy asks in a wavering voice. “I’ve been wondering why _anyone_ in their right mind would reject Steve Harrington _for_ _years_ and then _make up a story_ about going out with his best friend who’s got a pretty solidly bad reputation for _sleeping around.”_

Tina shakes her head, stunned. She’s heard plenty of stories about the crazy antics Billy gets up to, but the only ones he’s ever corroborated have come from Steve, and none of those have anything to do with girls or sleeping around— not that it would be her business or like she’d care even if it was.

“I didn’t make up any…” but her voice drops away. It feels like there’s a hurricane inside her chest.

“Tammy, she didn’t,” Heather cuts in, stepping around Tina’s shoulder. “She didn’t. I was making fun, and Jill misheard. Tina didn’t say anything about it.”

“So then,” Tammy says slowly, expression still rigid, “you’re _not_ going to the dance,” and taking care to enunciate every word, “with Billy. That’s shocking, Tina. Really,” and punctuates all of it by slamming her locker shut. “It’s almost like it’s _just boys_ you don’t want to date.”

Tina presses her lips together. God, she can’t breathe. The only person, apart from Katie, that she’s ever talked to about how she feels, is Steve. He’d been sweet about it, but she’s still not entirely sure he understood what she was telling him.

“Okay, stop! God, Tammy, just leave it alone.”

“Fine,” she says, trying to be casual, but it comes out too loud. “I was on my way out anyway.”

It’s only after Tammy’s gone and slammed the door behind her that Tina realizes she’s shaking and that she can’t catch her breath. Heather guides her to sit down again and covers her in a hug as soon as she’s not in any danger of falling. Jill, finally dressed, takes a knee and rubs Tina’s back.

“Jesus Christ, what crawled up her ass and died,” she mutters.

“She’s just pissed off because Steve doesn’t like her,” Heather retorts flatly, and then, brighter, like she’s trying to cheer Tina up with this remarkable piece of insight, “He’s liked you since the first day of middle school, and she can’t stand it. Oh, Tina,” she says, and the catch in her voice cracks Tina’s heart open even more. “Tina, please don’t cry. Don’t give her that.”

The door bangs open again, and Tina flinches, trying to hold her breath.

“Okay, losers, which one of you moved my— guys?” Lindy’s voice gets closer. “ _Tina?_ What’s wrong? What happened?”

Tina sits still for Lindy while she dabs at her face with the soft, fuzzy sleeve of her sweater. Jill roots around in the locker room for Tina’s jacket and drapes it around her shoulders before helping her fit her arms into it. Heather scoops her hair off her neck and ties it up into a bun. It’s going to dry in choppy waves, but Tina can’t bring herself to care. Lindy steps away for a second to get her some toilet paper for her nose and crouches in front of her again.

“Here, Tina,” Jill says, slipping a stick of lip balm into her hand. “Mine are always sore after I cry.”

The menthol in the chapstick makes her lips tingle, but it gives her a reason to miss their eyes a little longer. She caps it again and gives it back to Jill.

“Do you wanna talk about it, Tina?” Lindy asks carefully.

“Tammy was just in here, she…” Tina waves her hand and looks down at her lap when an ache in her throat chokes her airway. Her voice comes out strangled, and she hates it. “She got mad about Billy?”

 _“Billy Hargrove?”_ She cracks her knuckles. “What did that idiot do?”

“Oh, he didn’t do anything and you know it, Lindy,” Heather says, crossing her arms over her chest. “Tammy’s the one who got jealous over nothing.”

“Yeah, she started saying all this stuff about— sorry, Tina.”

“No, that’s okay.” She sighs unevenly and pats her hands over her burning cheeks again. She takes another few steadying breaths, makes a decision, and says, in the strongest voice she can, “Tammy was all worked up because I said Steve doesn’t want to go out with her— _because he doesn’t,_ she asked him last semester and he blew her off— so she turned around and said I wouldn’t go out with Steve all this time is because I… because I must… not like boys,” she finishes on a whisper.

Lindy stares at her without seeming to breathe. A tendon in her neck jumps, and she leans up to throw her arms around Tina’s neck. “Tina, I’m so sorry. That vicious little bitch is gonna get what’s coming to her the very next time I see her.”

“She wasn’t wrong,” Tina mumbles in a voice like wet leaves. “What she said, it’s true.”

“That doesn’t mean she had any right saying it to you like that,” Heather insists, joining in on their hug. “It’s none of her business. It’s not anyone’s business unless you say it is.”

“Yeah,” Jill adds, draping herself around Tina’s back to box her in the rest of the way. “You were just standing up for your friends. She didn’t need to attack you over it. And what’s the big deal anyway? I have one uncle who’s been single his whole life, and he’s a hotshot lecturer at Harvard now with a big house and a fancy car. Apparently you get a lot done when you’re not chasing girls,” she says, dropping around to kneel next to Lindy so Tina can see her sneaky smile, “or boys. Whoever.”

“Your uncle never wanted to be with anyone either?” Tina asks, perking up like she’s heard a dogwhistle.

Jill smiles easily and says, “Nope. Two summers ago I told my parents I was going to camp, but I actually snuck off to see my uncle, and when I got there, he brought me to see one of his lectures. I guess there’s this guy, Kinsey, who studied all this stuff back in the 50s… Did you guys know there’s more than just two ways to be? There’s this whole, like, scale of everything, and people can fall anywhere on it.”

“How many ways are there?” Tina asks, fascinated.

“Probably like a hundred!”

“No way,” Heather says, starting to smile. “A hundred?”

“Sure. You could like girls and boys but like one more the the other; you could like only boys or only girls; you could like neither, like my uncle— and in any one of those categories, every person could feel a little bit different! Cool, right?”

All the way back to smiling, Tina huffs a soft laugh. “Yeah, pretty cool.”

Lindy watches her closely for a second and then looks searchingly at Jill. “I didn’t know you thought about stuff like that.”

“Well. It’s not really polite conversation, is it? Not here.” She shrugs expansively, looking crestfallen. “I don’t know, every once in a while I start to think maybe it’d be okay to bring it up, and then this ugly shit happens. Sorry, Tina.”

She waves her hand. “It’s okay.”

Rolling her eyes, but in a gentle kind of way, Lindy says, “It’s not. But you feel better?”

“I feel better,” she parrots back dutifully, stiffening when she remembers. “Shoot! I wanted to catch Billy after his thing with Robin. What time is it?”

Lindy checks her watch. “I bet we can catch still him. You guys coming?”

“Not me,” Jill says, packing up. “Coach asked me to move your stuff into her office so she could get you your Letterman patches, and I completely forgot to put it back in your locker. I’m gonna do that and then head out.”

“Aww, thanks. Sorry I prematurely called you a loser. Heather?”

“I gotta hit the showers first. You guys go ahead.” Heather reels Tina into a tight hug. “It’ll all be okay, Tina.”

“Not for Tammy, it won’t be,” Lindy promises in her sweetest, airiest voice, already tugging Tina toward the exit by her wrist once she’s got her backpack and her cheerleading duffle.

 _What a mess,_ Tina thinks, rushing to follow Lindy out onto the quad.

She looks around in the gray afternoon for a head of yellow curls and spots him just as he spots her. He’s off to the side, sort of halfway engaging with Barb and Nancy, and to the right of him several feet off, Robin’s listening intently while Tammy talks animatedly. Billy holds up his hand in a wave, hesitates when he sees whatever face Tina’s making. Or possibly, not her, but Lindy.

Tina’s too late to catch her.

* * *

Billy’s not fond of Roller Derby, not one bit. He doesn’t like the flowery shit she douses herself in, he doesn’t like how soft her hair always looks, and he doesn’t like the way she talks about going out with his fucking boyfriend when he’s right there and can’t tell her to back off.

He didn’t think Buckley was the type to be friends with someone like that, as often as she turns her nose up at Steve without seeming to notice that she’s doing it. She turned her nose up at Billy the first month Ms. Carter put them in a room together, too. Actually he really appreciates that about her. How no-nonsense and straightforward and _intelligent_ she is. Like Wheeler.

Anyway, he can’t make sense of what she’d have in common with Thompson of all people. Just looking at her, he sees all the things Steve’s told him he used to be. All the glossy traits and shallow cuts you’d expect from someone with absent parents, a dysfunctional moral compass, and too many advantages to see them for the handicaps they’d wind up becoming before too long. A pretty face and nothing behind the eyes except _I want._

Billy knows. His eyes used to be dead like that, too.

So it’s just weird, is all. That she’d hang on Thompson’s every word and say all this consolatory bullshit to try and soften the blow that Steve’s not here to listen to her fucking love confession.

Of course, he can think of one reason she’d do that. It’s just a reason he hates.

Make no fuckin’ mistake either. If it was Nomura or Simmons or Holland or Louder or literally anyone other than this asshole, he wouldn’t give a shit. He doesn’t give a shit now. It’s just that he _likes_ Buckley, and she’s not Steve’s biggest fan on a good day, but right about now she could probably murder him.

 _What a mess,_ he thinks, trying desperately to tune Roller Derby out and listen to what Wheeler and Holland are talking about. Some book they’re reading in Ms. Carter’s class called _The Awakening._ Billy hasn’t read it, but he makes a note to bug Tench about it the next time he’s in the library since he zoomed through _Frankenstein_ and all the rest of the stuff on the list Carter gave him. He meant to ask today, but he hadn’t been able to focus on anything after Carter handed him that sealed envelope.

She hadn’t asked why he wanted all of his college stuff to be mailed directly to her. She hadn’t asked him to open it or to show her the answer that came back.

He hasn’t figured out how to tell Steve. Or Max. His dad.

 _God,_ he thinks, still picking up every other word from Thompson, _what a_ ** _fucking_** **_mess_** _._

Just when he’s nearly had enough of waiting, he spots Nomura walking out of the gym with Louder. He holds his hand up in a wave when Nomura notices him and— stops, tensing up instinctively at the sudden commotion. Louder breaks into a purposeful, angry stride that quickly escalates into a jog and then a brisk run. Nomura follows, uncharacteristically frantic, calling after her.

“This might as well happen,” he mutters.

“What?” Holland says, turning. She starts to smile but falters. “Lindy?”

Billy’s completely resigned to his fate by the time she gets close enough to lunge at him, and when she passes him up it’s nearly enough to give him whiplash.

“HEY, THOMPSON!”

“Lindy, just wait—”

She doesn’t wait. Roller Derby takes a hit poorly and makes a grab for Louder’s hair, but that just opens her up to get socked in the mouth.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Billy says, catching Nomura by the backpack so she jerks away from the fight instead of toward it.

“Billy, you don’t get it.”

“You’re right, I don’t. Just sit tight.”

“But I…”

Billy frowns at her with his whole face and pointedly lets go of her bag. “But you what?”

“But they’re fighting because of me. It’s my fault,” she says in a rush, and her eyes start to go all misty and red like Max’s do when she gets in her angry, protective moods.

“What do you mean it’s your fault?” Wheeler asks, out of breath from trying to keep Holland out of the fight.

“Lindy’s just— she’s just standing up for me,” Nomura explains haltingly, but at least she doesn’t try to intervene again.

A few more blows rain down from either side before Holland manages to pull Louder out of the fray. Thompson’s working with a busted lip and a bruised cheek to go with the scratches down Louder’s neck. Holland fusses over her for a second— or she tries, Louder won’t be still for it— while Buckley does a similar dance with Thompson.

“Okay, _what the_ _fuck_ ,” Holland says, trying with little success to keep Louder behind her when she starts trying to worm past her.

“You couldn’t just mind your own business, could you?” Thompson shouts, tears on her face and in her voice. “Either of you!”

“That’s rich, coming from a bully,” Louder spits.

“She started it!”

“I’m more than happy to finish it,” Louder says, trying to get around Holland again. _“Fucking homophobe.”_

Oh. Oh, shit.

There’s a long pause then, an ugly one. Buckley lets go of Thompson like she’s been burned. Holland lets go of Louder, too, but she’s slower about it, measured. Only dropping her hands so she can step up to stand at her shoulder. Wheeler joins in on her other side, closing ranks with Billy and Nomura behind them. Rather than fight all of them or try to plead her case, Thompson turns tail and bolts.

And yeah. That’s about right.

Billy glances over at Nomura, at her clenched fists and silent tears. “Hey. C’mere.”

She steps sideways into him, right under his arm. He’s never noticed before that she’s the perfect height for that. It’s never even crossed his mind. He wonders if it’s crossed hers, with how easily she sinks into it. Maybe the automatic sweep of her arm coming up between Steve’s old backpack and Mr. Harrington’s jacket is just something she’s always been able to have, with anyone. Billy envies her that ease. He does his best to emulate it by wrapping his other arm around her in a proper hug the likes of which Steve would give.

Side hugging is kid stuff.

The door to the gym clangs shut, and Billy glances over that way. It’s the girl from the other side of Nomura’s sketch of Steve. And that’s great. That’s what this party needs. Another cheerleader.

“Tina, are you—” Louder starts to ask, only to stop when she sees them. “Oh. Hey, Billy.”

“Hey, Louder.” He holds her gaze for a second, hearing that word she’d thrown out like an insult. “Having a party tomorrow night. Wanna come?”

Sounding suitably suspicious of him, she drawls, “You? Throwing a party?”

“It’s for his birthday,” Tina supplies, muffled by his jacket until she turns her head. “Which is today, so you have to be nice to him.”

She scowls, but in a way Billy’s deeply familiar with, like she’s trying to kick up a fuss over nothing to keep herself from smiling. He waits her out.

Eventually, she shoots Holland a sideways glance. “You’re going?”

“Yup. Hi, Heather!”

“Hey— oh, my gosh, Lindy! Did I miss it?”

Nomura breaks away from Billy then to regale her with the story, mostly by peppering Louder’s retelling with her typical flair for dramatics. Billy slips away while the focus is on them to see to Buckley, who’s still just standing where Thompson left her, looking lost and unmoored. He takes a page out of Nomura’s book and bumps Buckley’s shoulder with his until she snaps out of it and looks at him.

He doesn’t think she wants to talk about the stung red look in her eyes, so he pretends not to notice. Instead, he just says, “Wanna come to my birthday party tomorrow night?”

She laughs, a bitter, broken sound. “What, really?”

“Sure, why not? Steve got nerf guns and everything.”

“Cheap beer and nerf guns,” she muses, looking away and rubbing her sleeve at her cheek. “Sounds like a match made in heaven.”

“’S not that kinda party. There’s gonna be kids, so no booze. C’mon, Buckley, it’ll be fun. Eat some cake, destroy some middle schoolers with foam darts. This is peak entertainment here.”

She looks at him for a long time, a few stray tears caught in her eyelashes and sticking them together, and then she looks behind him at the small army of girls rallied around Nomura trying to keep her laughing. Billy stuffs his hands in pockets, feeling the smooth edges of the guitar pick he lifted off Steve on Christmas. Buckley’s face changes when she switches her focus back to him, and once he might’ve prickled up under that look, but now he just raises an eyebrow at it.

“What?”

“You’re not what I expected.”

“I used to be,” he murmurs around a shrug. “Maybe I am still, sometimes. I don’t know.”

“You’re not.”

His face warms. “Do you wanna come to my party or not, Buckley?”

She crosses her arms in front of her chest, the makings of a smile twitching at her lips. “All right, Hargrove, I’ll be there. No need to get upset.”

He scoffs and starts to go but then stops, remembering. “Hey, Nomura! You got that thing for me or what?”

“Yes! I’ve got it! I’m coming, I’m coming.”

She gives her duffle bag to the other cheerleader to hold so she can riffle through her backpack for her sketchbook. Once she’s liberated it, she comes running over, and the girl from the drawing trails after her, shouldering her duffle on her one free shoulder. Nomura hauls Billy off to the side to give them some privacy, leaving Buckley with the cheerleader, who holds her hand out to introduce herself.

Holland said her name was Heather, he thinks. Heather Holloway?

Nomura carefully extracts a page out of her sketchbook and gives it to him. It’s another drawing of Steve, but miles above the previous one in terms of ability. Not that Billy knows the terminology or how to talk about technique or whatever, but it’s so obvious in how much steadier the pencil strokes are here. She must’ve drawn it recently, and with Steve sitting still for it like he had the first time around. In this one, though, he’s looking right out of the drawing, that smile of his rendered so perfectly in varying shades of graphite.

“Do you love it?” she teases, bouncing on her heels, none of the tears or tension from earlier visible in her demeanor now.

“Yeah,” he chokes out, rubbing his thumb into the corner next to where she signed her name.

“Happy Birthday!”

He studies it for a few seconds more before carefully, _carefully,_ tucking it into the binder he’s started to keep for Ms. Carter’s class. He zips up his bag, swings it back around to his back, and crushes her in a hug that he can feel squeezes all the air out of her.

“Thank you.”

“Of course,” she squeaks out, patting his back. “What are friends for?”

He hears a the shutter of a camera click and looks up. He lets Nomura come up for air to be in the next one, and while he can’t muster up a wide, picture-perfect grin to match hers, he is smiling, at least. And he’s smiling for real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll read this later and notice embarrassing typos probably, but my god man this spiraled into a much longer chapter than I anticipated and I can't look at it anymore!!! ;___;


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